The Wedding Guitar
by FernWithy
Summary: In 1931, Ernesto de la Cruz makes his screen debut, and while most of Santa Cecilia is impressed with their homegrown hero, Imelda and Coco notice only one thing on the poster: A guitar they both remember well.
1. Chapter 1

1

 _1931._ _  
_Perhaps it was something of an irony that she would never have heard what happened to the guitar if she had not first heard Oscar whisper harshly, _"Don't tell Imelda."_ Or perhaps it was dumb luck. It astounded Imelda Rivera how easy it was to confuse the two.

She was in the crawlspace above the shop, where Coco thought she was hiding her pile of dancing shoes. Imelda had found this particular stash three weeks earlier, and was seriously considering confronting her daughter about them. It might not be worth it. If Coco wanted to dance a bit, it was, Imelda supposed, all right… to a point. As long as Coco came back to the workshop and didn't hum, as long as Imelda herself didn't have to listen to those maddening rhythms, as long as they didn't bring back the dreams at night and hot fire of shame in the morning…

She tightened her jaw, pressing her tongue against the back of her teeth as hard as she could, until the pain in her skull erased the swell of feeling that rose in her as she looked at the scuffed soles of her daughter's handmade shoes. How she had danced once… how Héctor had played, and Coco had danced, and the words to the songs had come from Imelda's own mouth, and how it had been later, after Coco was tucked safely into her crib, how…

She made a sound something like, "Tssssssh," and tossed Coco's shoes back into the corner. It wouldn't need to be a confrontation, not yet. She'd outgrow it, with luck. Meanwhile, a few more hours at the shop would keep her out of the plaza. There would be a big order soon. She'd give Coco more responsibility. Responsibility was the cure for everything. Responsibility was the only way to stop the mad melodies that had drawn Héctor out, the wild rhythms she had never been able to compete with.

She had just made this decision when the twins rattled back to the shop, a heavily laden cart of leather between them. They were talking back and forth about a girl they both pretended to admire, though Imelda had privately given them both up for bachelors. "I would have taken her to the movies," Felipe said, "but.. you know."

"Everyone will be seeing it. Everyone is talking about it."

"I think we won't. And I think it's safe to say La Hermana will never spend a peso on a musical."

Oscar snorted. "The problem is the poster, Felipe." He sighed loudly. Imelda peeked out from behind the giant shoe. Oscar was now sitting on top of the piles of rolled leather. "I still can't believe it."

"Ernesto was always a snake."

"I don't mean Ernesto. I mean the poster, Felipe. You saw it. You saw what he's done." He shook his head. "Just… _don't tell Imelda._ "

Felipe looked out toward the burning sunset. He didn't speak for a minute, and when he did, his voice was quiet and thoughtful. "I didn't see his name on the poster."

Imelda froze. There was only one person the twins would speak of in that particular tone. One person whose name was _never_ mentioned in full. She sat in complete stillness, a cat stalking in the shadows, waiting for whatever motion was coming.

"He wouldn't use his name. He knows we'd kill him for what he did to her, if we could find him."

"Doesn't it ever seem strange to you? Of all people to… to do what he did?"

"Ernesto filled his head with crazy dreams," Oscar said. "And that's enough talk of that" - he called Héctor a name that he would not have used had he known Imelda was listening - "for one night."

"One _lifetime_ ," Felipe magnified. "Let's get this unloaded."

Imelda remained in the crawlspace until they were gone, and the sun was down to a florid strip of rose petals on the horizon. Don't tell Imelda. Don't tell her _what_? Oh, but that was obvious enough. Héctor had done something big enough for them to notice, something that her brothers thought would cause her to have what she knew very well they called a berrinche, a tantrum. In other words, when she put her foot down to keep her family together.

Whatever it was, it would be in the film that had just opened in the square, _El Camino a Casa_. She was aware on some level that Héctor's partner, the shiftless wastrel Ernesto de la Cruz, had been put into a moving picture, one of the talking and singing sort. It was on the front page of the local newspaper that she had delivered to the shop every day. He was something of a local hero for it, almost as if he hadn't shaken the dust of Santa Cecilia from his boots ten years ago. It didn't mention Héctor (Imelda had read it, absolutely not because she was looking for news of him), but wherever de la Cruz was, Héctor would undoubtedly be found wandering around like an overexcited little puppy.

 _Really, Imelda?_ a nagging voice asked inside her head. _Is that_ really _what you believe inside? Was that Héctor when he left? Was he bouncing around like the wild boy he once was when he kissed Coco goodbye?_

She banished this thought. She had begged him to stay. He had left. And he had stayed away. That was all she needed to know.

She let herself out from under the sign and scrambled down the roof. It was a bit undignified for a lady who was bordering on well-to-do these days - and planned to stay that way, no matter what the government thought of it - but she couldn't very well put up a ladder without advertising her snooping into Coco's secrets.

She dusted herself off at the bottom, straightened her skirts and lifted her head. Mama Imelda was not to be seen in a compromised position.

Coco was bent over some scrollwork on a boot, and she smiled brightly when Imelda came into the workshop, her dimple deepening.

"Did you finish your school work?" Imelda asked.

"Yes, Mama. And I got my math test back today! One hundred percent right!" She reached under the table and pulled out the test sheet, which had indeed been given a perfect mark.

"Good. Your numbers are important. Someday, you'll need to know how to keep our books."

Coco's foot was swinging back and forth under her chair, hitting the rungs in a perfect two-step rhythm, as if she could still hear her papa's guitar in her head. Imelda watched it pointedly. Coco stopped, forcing her right foot to be still by stomping her left on top of it and holding it down. She went back to her scrollwork.

Imelda took her own seat and began shaping the upper for a sandal. The twins came in a few minutes later and unrolled a new sheet of leather. They began pestering her to branch out into saddles, even though they knew she'd tell them that saddles were a dying industry, while shoes would be needed forever. They worked together into the small hours of the night, none of them telling the others anything that had been going through their minds.

As always, Imelda was the last to go to bed, and expected to be the first out in the morning.

She dreamed, and in her dream, she sang while the soft, picked guitar guided her through the fog. She was young again, and hungry and half-wild herself, and all that had mattered (other than taking care of the twins, but they were getting old enough to care for themselves) had been the soaring feel of the song coming from deep in her chest, and the gentle touch of the guitar's notes that seemed to caress her.

She woke up dangerously close to tears, and clenched her jaw again, driving away the wildness with absolute control. A breath. Another. With each exhalation, the hateful fullness in her chest seeped away and the heat in her eyes cooled. By the time she heard Coco stirring, she felt confident enough to go out to the water closet and wash her face. Indoor plumbing was fairly new in Santa Cecilia, and Imelda had been proud to help make it happen. The new hacienda she'd built out from the workshop - the workshop that had once been the hovel she'd shared with Héctor, and hadn't it seemed grand then - was the first in town to be built with a real working bathroom. It didn't have hot water of its own, and this usually bothered Imelda (she was working on a correction), but this morning, the ice cold splash from the sink was exactly what she needed.

This was _now_ , the fine world of 1931, not the wild days of the tens, when war had swept over the land and music, once her ally, had turned on her and killed…

No, there had been no killing. Just a desertion. It would not be dignified with martial honors.

And it was ten years in the past.

She should be over it by now.

 _Yes, but Imelda, you know something is wrong. This is something you know. You know where de la Cruz is now, and he will know where Héctor is, and you can yell at him as you like, but you will know that… that…_

Her mind provided her with alternatives, as it always did. They rarely involved Héctor finding another family, but she had seen a thousand deaths for him, from starvation in the streets to conscription in the fighting. Or voluntary fighting. Héctor had always been a better Catholic than she was (except in the small matter of taking care of his family), and she could imagine him suiting up to fight with the Cristeros against Calles. Especially if he'd heard what had happened to old Ceci Lopez when they caught her smuggling guns in Jalisco. Ceci had tried to recruit Imelda to the cause, of course. Las Brigadas Femeninas de Santa Juana de Arco. Imelda had refused. She had a business to run and a child to raise; she did not have time for romantic military quests. Ceci had cut her off then, refusing to speak to her, even to say goodbye when she left her shop and went north. When Imelda had caught her at the door and demanded that she say something, she had said, "He was right, you know. You are not worth staying for."

And she had left, walking off into the rain just as Héctor had, and the next thing Imelda had heard, she had been shot in a plaza in Zapopan.

If Héctor had heard of it, he might have gone to the wars. He would fight for Ceci. He wouldn't do it _well_ , because he didn't have much fight in him, and maybe that's what the twins saw on the poster. Maybe it was a memorial or…

She stomped hard enough on the floor that Coco heard her, and a few minutes later, they were engaged in their morning routines. An hour later, Coco was on her way to school. The twins left two hours after that, to pick up a shipment in Ocatlán.

Imelda was alone.

 _Don't tell Imelda… The problem is the poster…_

She started toward the workshop, meaning to get started on a repair job that needed to be done, but the words came back again. Don't tell Imelda.

She took off her apron with a decisive motion. Nothing could stop her from going to the plaza if she chose to. She was a free woman. (In a way, Héctor had done her one favor: By not dying, he had left her a married woman, so she had not needed an excuse not to marry again, and that left her in charge of her own life.)

But she was known. Doña Rivera's presence would be noted and reported.

She might have all the right in the world to come and go as she pleased, but she did not care to have her actions questioned by all and sundry.

She paused, possibly for a full minute, then marched back to her bedroom. There was a trunk beneath the bed. She knew Coco had been through it more than once in her absence, another thing they did not talk about, but no one else knew it was there. She should have thrown all of it out, or given it to charity, but she couldn't bear the hurt look she knew would appear in Coco's eyes. And if Héctor was going to haunt her today anyway, he might as well make himself useful for once.

She opened the trunk.

The first thing she saw was his crooked, infuriating smile, the ridiculous one he got when he had a scheme in mind. He couldn't help it, it was just the way he was built, but that smile… Of all the stupid ways to look in a family photo. If it hadn't been the only one she had from Coco's early childhood, she'd have thrown it away. Really. But photographs hadn't been as easy to come by back then, and they'd had the damned thing taken together on Coco's third birthday. She herself had been twenty-one, and Héctor had been twenty. She had tried to look like she was taking it seriously, wearing her best dress, with her hair impeccably done. Héctor had worn his charro suit, the first one, the one that Ceci had made for him. And he had insisted on having the guitar in the picture. The one she had made for him as a wedding present, working her fingers to the bone after her day at the shop was over.

She had always loved making things with her hands, and had disguised herself as a boy once to try and learn the trade of guitar making. It wasn't strictly forbidden, but the old man had made it clear when she'd come to him in a dress that he had no intention of letting her learn from him, no matter how much he enjoyed her singing. At the time, she'd only wanted to learn it for herself, thinking she could make coins in the plaza like the other musicians, and she _had_ made herself a serviceable instrument at one point, but the one she built with all the love in her heart, the one that she'd thought held her very soul… only Héctor had ever played it.

The master guitar maker, of course, had eventually caught on and sent her to Ceci's shop instead - sewing was more fitting as a lady's occupation - but she had used everything she _did_ know to make that guitar perfect. For him. He had walked away with it strapped over his back, and was probably playing it for some other naïve girl now.

 _You know he is not, Imelda._

All right, that much, she knew. Héctor may have had his many, many, multiple and myriad and manifold faults, but he had not fooled her, nor had he toyed with any other girl. His music was the only mistress he had ever needed. And of the pair of them, he was the naïve one. He had always believed that things would get better for the wishing, that the world


	2. Chapter 2

2

 _1914._ _  
_isn't so bad, you know, Imelda?" He grinned at her, stretching out on the pile of loose cloth in Señora Ceci's studio. He wasn't supposed to be there, especially when they were alone, but Ceci had a soft spot for him, just as she had for Imelda herself, and Imelda knew that her cherished ambition was for her two wandering orphans to build one another a home.

"How can you say that?" she asked. "Half the people who made the cloth you're lying on were killed and thrown into the ocean for the sharks to eat. And don't say" - she said before he could even open his mouth - "that it's not so bad for the sharks."

"That was years ago," he said. "I'm sure they have new people. New people everywhere else."

This, at least, was true. Huerta had been toppled last month, and now the revolution was going to finally succeed. Of course, Imelda's belief in the ability of any of those cocky generales to do anything other than preen for one another was a bit shaky. She had decided long ago not to link her fortunes to anyone's politics.

Héctor rolled over onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. "I made money in the square today, playing with Ernesto. Enough for food for both of us, and your brothers."

"For how long?"

"Well, a day or two."

Imelda raised her eyebrows.

"All right, a meal. But it's one that will be on the table."

" _Will_ be?"

"Well, Nesto is going to buy the food when the market opens in the morning. I thought I'd bring food over to your house at lunch time. Maybe there will even be more. Nesto's playing in the cantina tonight. He says I'm too young."

Imelda sniffed. "Say goodbye to that money, Héctor. He'll drink it. Or spend it on fancy girls."

"You should sing with us."

"I do sing with you."

"I mean in the square, for coins. It's faster than stitching." He mimed pulling a needle and thread through the cloth. "And you like it more, I know you do…" He gave her his widest grin, the one she couldn't help returning.

"Héctor…"

He pulled himself to his feet and grabbed his rickety old guitar. Imelda had tuned it as well as she could and shored it up - Héctor knew everything about playing a guitar, but next to nothing about making one - and its sound was surprisingly good. He struck a C chord. "Come on now, Imelda, you know you want to sing… come on…  
 _Cantas tu canción libre_  
 _Querida, sabes que lo quieres_  
 _Sabes que no es imposible_  
 _Cantar mi canción de placeres…"_

Imelda stopped sewing. "You made that up on the spot, Héctor! I've never heard it before, and I know all your songs."

He gave her a sheepish shrug. "It's nothing. Just a little rhyming, that's all."

"It's not nothing. It's good."

"You think so?"

"Do I say things I don't mean?"

"You don't think it's a little… well, placeres, you know…" He wiggled his eyebrows. "Like it's not just the song you like?"

Imelda felt her cheeks go unexpectedly hot at this, though she didn't know entirely why. "I've heard mariachis singing. I think it's a little mild to just talk about… "

"Pleasures?"

The blush crept down her neck, swirled around her stomach, and settled in her lower belly. "Well, you know."

Another grin, this time sheepish, over the top of the guitar. "I've been learning to write the songs down, notes and all. Nesto says I don't have to learn to read music, or write it - just play by ear, you can copy anything, you know? And then I can teach him new songs that way."

"But that means only Nesto gets to learn them, since you don't play for anyone else who can do that, at least not on purpose."

"Maybe somebody in the plaza can, but…" He bit his lip. "I think it's better if I write them down with my name on them, you know? So that…"

"No one steals them?"

"Well, I don't mean I think I'm so good that someone would steal…"

"You're good enough to steal from, Héctor. I swear I heard one of the mariachis singing that one you made up about Ceci…"

"Doña Dulcita?" He wrinkles his nose. "I've been fixing that one, it's bad! They're not singing the bad one, are they?"

"Yes, well, don't be surprised if he says _you_ stole it." Imelda went back to her sewing. "And don't teach Nesto _anything_ until someone else knows you wrote it."

"Nesto wouldn't sell me out. He's been looking after me since I was nine!"

"Ceci's been looking after you. Nesto's been looking after Nesto."

"Imelda!"

"Which one feeds you, and which one belts out your songs - wrong - to get money for himself? You think he's singing _his_ songs in the cantina tonight?"

"He'll give me my cut." Héctor shook his head and rolled his eyes. "He blusters, but he's all right. You just don't like him because of Teresa."

"Teresa's ruined, and he didn't even care." She sighed. "I don't want to fight. Teresa made stupid choices. Nesto _was_ her stupid choice. She was always an idiot, even back with the Sisters."

Héctor seemed uncomfortable with this line of discussion, and just fiddled with his guitar a bit. He and Imelda had both been orphaned early, but their lives were very different. Imelda regretted the comment, not because she had any feeling about insulting Ernesto, but because in all likelihood, she had called Héctor's own mother an idiot in the process. Not that he knew for sure. He'd been left wrapped up in a blanket in the square, and Ceci, a new widow, had found him and taken him in. After she had lost her house and ended up living here in the shop, the owner hadn't let her keep him and he'd been on his own, but she was the closest thing he remembered to a mother. Most likely, whoever had given birth to him had, like Teresa, made a very stupid choice and wound up in trouble. At least that was the most palatable explanation. As to a father, neither of them had a theory.

Her own memories of her real parents were barely clearer, even though she'd been nearly five when they died. She did not discuss them. It seemed unwise. Her only clear memories of life before the twins were born were of a woman who was _not_ her mother, wearing a crisp uniform and combing out her hair while she talked about her real children. When the twins had come along, a second woman in a second uniform had joined them in the nursery. She had been cruel to Imelda, and the only thing that came through completely in her memory was being called "princesita" in a disparaging voice, just before the woman, adopting a much more servile tone, practically bowed and said, "Doña, what do you wish?"

As for "Doña" herself… a swirl of red silk, black hair set in curls, and a hand fan with a jewel in the handle. That was Imelda's entire memory of her mamá, and even that had a queer, faded and flat tone. Papá, to judge by her memory, was a tall white horse and a military boot. Of her real name, she had no idea, and did not think it was wise to go looking for the names of hacendados who had been murdered… for that was what she was certain had happened. She had awoken in the night and smelled smoke, and the twins' nanny was above her. There was a gunshot, then her own nanny had been there, and both Imelda and the twins were wrapped in a rough peasant blanket and carried out into the night. Bright fire made it seem like day. There was a stop at a rough house, and Imelda remembered having her nice nightgown taken from her and thrown into a fireplace. There were five other children, and her nanny told them, "These are your primas, Tía Luisa's babies, do you understand?" And then Imelda had been put in scratchy trousers, and her hair had been cut off. If anyone had come looking for them, she had no memory of it. Some time later - maybe a week - the nanny had packed them into a cart and taken them to the Sisters in Santa Cecilia. "You'll be safer here."

That night, she had first sung to the wailing twins to calm them down, and she would continue singing to the other children every night for years.

And so she, Oscar, and Felipe had been left nameless and destitute at the convent's orphan home, where they had stayed until it closed three years ago, anticipating seizure by revolutionary forces. The children had been allowed to stay in the old orphanage building, but they'd all had to find work to keep food on the tables. Imelda had tried learning to make guitars, wanting desperately to be around music. It was in the guitar shop that she'd first made Héctor's acquaintance. He had been kicked unceremoniously onto the street, and he came into the shop to sing - not in return for coins, but for being allowed to play one of the guitars for a few hours. Imelda (who had, at the time, been pretending to be a boy named Ignacio, though Héctor claimed to have never been fooled), had listened in wonder as he improved every day. He was, to her mind, one of God's small miracles, able to master with no teacher what others never accomplished despite years of formal training.

He played and sang incessantly, humming even when he was meant to be doing something else, but he also sang his songs and scrounged for spare change in the plaza. He thought himself too young to sing some of the songs the other mariachis played, so he started making up his own words, and sometimes his own tunes, about being a boy and doing things boys did, and the songs made the men laugh with fond remembrance, and one of them had finally given him his own guitar. As an instrument, it was garbage, despite Imelda's care, but Héctor could make it sing.

Ernesto de la Cruz was a few years older, from one of the town's middle-class families. He had taken formal lessons and was, at best, competent. Unlike Héctor, he reveled in singing things that were too old for him, leering and winking at older women who ate it up like candy. A disgusting spectacle on everyone's part, as far as Imelda was concerned. He'd noticed Héctor early on, and apparently thought he could increase his take by letting them also be charmed by the idea of a child. In this, he was right - he had a good idea of his audience, she would give him that. Héctor thought of him as a kind of patron, who'd brought in much more money, so he could now play the provider to younger children (including Oscar and Felipe, who idolized him). Imelda thought of him as someone who took more than half the money (more like three quarters) for doing about a third of the work… and the easy third at that, just singing and charming people. Even _she_ could do that if she tried. But Héctor would hear no ill of him, and Imelda didn't want to fight. She liked being with Héctor, with his crooked, silly smile and his soft voice, and the constant noodling on the guitar.

"Ceci's almost done with your jacket," she said. "You'll love it."

"I'll look like a proper musician."

"A proper performer, anyway. You always look like a proper musician."

He looked up at her, surprised and pleased, for a moment, too happy even to smile. Finally, he looked down at his guitar and said, "Thank you." The late afternoon sunlight danced through the window, and the motes from the brightly colored fabric made a kind of glowing halo around Héctor and his guitar. Imelda's heart felt suddenly too large for her chest, and her eyes were hot with tears, though she couldn't have said why. She only knew that her body and mind weren't big enough to fit what she felt sometimes, like she was nothing more than a too-small shoe that would have to break open soon. Sometimes, she could imagine what it would feel like, to open herself up and let all of her feelings out. She pictured them as a sort of living light, pouring out of her, wrapping around both of them, and…

"Play something sweet, Héctor," she whispered, and her voice seemed strange to her.

He fumbled on the strings - something that almost never happened - then nodded. He started to play, and after a moment, Imelda joined in, letting her voice mix with his guitar. He rarely sang when she did, though he knew she liked his voice. He just listened to her and played with a look on his face that resembled prayer. The song felt both very short and very long. Héctor moved over to the window while he played, and the sun bounced light from the surface of his guitar.

"I like playing for you," he said when it ended.

"We like you playing for her, too!" someone shouted outside the open window.

Imelda giggled and put down her sewing. Out the window, she could see a group of mariachis. "What are you boys doing down there?"

"Worshipping at the altar of your lovely voice, señorita! Come sing with us!"

"I only sing with Héctor."

"Then let Héctor come down, too!"

Imelda looked over her shoulder. "Did you arrange that?"

He shook his head. "Let's go down, though. Come on. Ceci won't mind if you take a few minutes, she wants you to sing. I bet she's got a pretty dress for you to go with my charro suit."

Imelda bit her lip, looked down at her sewing. There wasn't much left. She could finish… after…

"Give us a moment!"

"Oh, do you need to kiss the boy first?" one of the mariachis called, waggling his eyebrows.

"Imelda is a good girl," Héctor scolded them. "She doesn't think like that."

"Speak for yourself," Imelda muttered, and this time, Héctor blushed. But she didn't kiss him - not then, that would be later, as the moon rose, and they danced a slow waltz under its soft light, and they would never look backward from then. What she did do at that moment was get Ceci's nearly finished charro jacket. It was only missing two designs on the back that needed careful embroidery. She pulled it around him and


	3. Chapter 3

3

 _1931._ _  
_carefully buttoned it up to her throat. His trousers were a bit tight around her hips, but she kept herself slim, so it wasn't too bad. The jacket was broad-shouldered and padded, and changed her feminine form quite effectively. Her hair would be the giveaway, but if she stayed to the shadows and kept the sombrero tipped back, no one would notice the tell-tale upsweep at the base of her neck, and the crown was big enough to pile a large bun into. She had a low voice for a woman as it was, and she'd been mistaken for a man in the past.

She looked at herself in the mirror, in Héctor's clothes. She did not imagine that they smelled like him. He'd sweated into them often enough, but he always kept his things meticulously clean. Still, there was something of him here, in the way the elbows were slightly worn on the inside, lower than where her own elbows rested, or in the tiny frayed spots where the jacket used to rest against his guitar. There was something heavy in one pocket, and she pulled out a little leather folder, wrapped carefully in a ribbon.

The letters. So Coco was hiding them here, of all places. Imelda undid the ribbon. She didn't know why. She remembered the letters well enough without looking at the damnable things. They had been addressed to Coco, but Coco hadn't been reading then, and Héctor had intended them to be read together, often putting gentle teases in that only Imelda would catch.

At least at first.

The early letters were long, written from hotel rooms around Oaxaca. He often put in the poems he meant to turn into songs. Coco's lullaby was in the first one - "Remember Me." Imelda knew it by heart, because Coco had sung herself to sleep with it every night (and might still; Imelda usually stayed in the shop until after Coco was asleep), but still, Héctor had sent it to her, even with a little drawing he'd made of her. Coco had very carefully drawn a picture of him as well, and Imelda had dutifully sent it along to their next stop. It had gotten a thank you… "but I don't know that we'll be able to trust the mail system following us around… Tío Nesto keeps finding little places to play along the way, and we may not get to every place when we thought we would…"

That was the first clue that "Tío Nesto" was extending their three-month tour. "Six months, my love," Héctor had written in a side note to Imelda. "I know it's not what we planned, but Nesto says we're very close to breaking through with a performance contract. I told him, six months only…"

More songs. A quirky one about how Imelda had once told him that he made her a little crazy ("I miss your mamá; tell her I hope I am not making her more than un poco loco now. I think I may be muy loco if I don't see you both soon…") A little one about Coco dancing. One lovely ballad about a beautiful woman who became even more beautiful as a mother. A few very silly cantina numbers that were probably just written for Ernesto to get laughs. There were dozens, all of them looking half-finished as poems, but Imelda knew that somewhere, his songbook was growing, and the tunes he set the words to would make them live.

The letters got shorter as the tour got longer. Imelda at the time had thought she sensed some anger at Ernesto for continuing to add venues. In one of his side notes, he'd written, "I will put my foot down soon, Imelda, but the money is good, and if we really do find a contract, it will mean being secure forever." This had, in fact, come with a fairly healthy sum, which Imelda had immediately put away for safekeeping.

There was some kind of reconciliation when they got to Mexico City. First, Héctor had sent a funny letter about the pair of them auditioning together for a movie studio. Just like old times in Santa Cecilia, he'd said. Nesto would have to either succeed or call it quits soon; it's not like there was further to go than the capital. He'd had to spend money just to have a silly picture taken of himself in order to show the movie's casting director - "Who knows why?" he wrote to Coco, "As I was standing right there and they could see how handsome I am?" This time, the side note to Imelda had been full of humor. After all, the thought of skinny, awkward Héctor as a movie star was absurd in itself, and he couldn't imagine why Nesto wanted to do it. "Why would they want musicians when films are silent? But Nesto is convinced that this is the future, so I thought I'd give it a try. It was a laugh, anyway, pretending to be an actor. I rode an imaginary horse, and waved a prop sword around, which is always fun. Also, I met a very silly actress named Lupe…"

And, after that, there was a change in the tone. At first, Imelda had convinced herself that the "silly actress" was the cause, but she read an article about the actress, who did not appear to be having affairs with ridiculous musicians. But suddenly, Héctor was enthusiastic about the tour. Nesto had procured a typewriter somewhere, and Héctor loved playing with it (Imelda imagined him liking the clacking sounds, like little castanets). "See this wonderful new toy Tío Nesto bought! He was put in a picture. Papá was not so lucky. He will have to keep trying…"

If Ernesto had been cast in a movie at the time, it was one that had never made it far out of Mexico City, if it had been made at all. Now, ten years later, he was finally starring. Héctor apparently wasn't, unless what was on the poster the twins had spoken of was Héctor, performing under a different name.

There were five letters on the typewriter, each shorter than the last and with a longer space between them. He left Mexico City and went on to the northern border towns. The tales were mainly the deeds of Tío Nesto, who was heroically trying to find Héctor more work. The last, from Tijuana, had included a check for a decent amount of money, and the cryptic note, "I must be who I was born to be, Imelda. Someday, I will find my place."

And then, silence. Imelda could read a map as well as anyone. He'd probably crossed the border and was trying to "find his place" in Hollywood. Héctor… who had thought the whole scheme ridiculous at first.

 _So you believe that he is following Ernesto around like a little puppy_ and _that he's trying his luck in Hollywood_ and _that he died fighting with the Cristeros? Imelda, do you really, honestly believe any of this nonsense?_

All right, so it was one or the other or the other. Did it matter? He was gone. She and Coco had not been worth coming home to when he could chase his silly fantasies. The money he'd sent had gone into the business, and Imelda had made it back five times over. Shoes were forever.

She shook her head and shoved the letters back into their leather binder. Coco must have made it just to keep them in, from scraps down in the shop.

 _Throw them out, Imelda. And take off this ridiculous costume, and get back to work. Throw the costume out. Both the maker and wearer hate you now. Leave alone whatever the twins learned in the square. Sew shut that empty place Héctor left, like it is a sprung seam on a shoe. Make it watertight again. Don't leave these things here, letting the rot inside. Coco will get over it._

But Coco would not get over it. And since Imelda preferred not to let her daughter know that the trunk had been opened, she couldn't very well discard things that had been hidden there.

Instead, she took a deep breath and shook herself out, as she always did before a performance. Then she pocketed the letters carefully where they had been and went downstairs. She couldn't leave through the front, but there was a quiet area in back, where the twins were building out the hacienda. It was full of broken boards and tools, and it was open to a tiny back alley that ran between the baker's shop and the butcher's. Imelda made her way through it, and emerged onto the sunny side street that ran to the square. No one saw her until she was in a crowd, just one more mariachi on the way to the square.

"Eh, boy, did you forget your guitar?" another musician asked easily as she passed a bench.

Imelda shrugged, adopting the loose, easy stride of a man. "Taking a break for the day," she said, pleased to hear no tremor in her voice. "Broke a string. I thought I'd go to the pictures."

The musician laughed. "Going to see our local boy make good, are you? Do you think you will be the next de la Cruz?"

"Do I want to?" Imelda asked.

"Who wouldn't?" The musician jumped up onto the bench, placing his hand over his heart and adopting a melodramatic pose. "We, too, could solve the world's problems, woo its finest women, sing our way into the heart of a nation! We could have our lovely custom guitar and our perfect teeth…"

"Custom guitar?"

"Ay." He got down. "He says he found it in the garbage and restored it himself, but I'd guess the studio had it made for him. Who would throw out an instrument like that?"

Imelda tried to smile and act like he'd said nothing of consequence, but something was starting to dawn on her, an awful idea, something the twins might have seen.

Something unforgivable.

She couldn't make the smile work, and covered by spitting on the cobbles, pretending it expressed her feelings only about how someone could discard a good guitar.

"You all right, muchacho?" the man asked. "You look a little green around the gills."

"Something I ate," Imelda muttered. "I'm going to the movies."

"Have fun. Wait until you hear him talk. 'The music isn't just in me, it _is_ me!'" He laughed. "The whole world should be written by movie writers, don't you think?"

"Maybe they wouldn't make such a mess of it," Imelda muttered.

She shuffled on down the street, toward the grand old building that was the movie palace now. It had been a normal theater when she was a girl, and she had sung here so often that her feet carried her to it almost by instinct, her toes itching inside of her botines, wanting to find the boards of a stage that was now hidden behind a giant silver screen. Earlier this year, she'd seen the first talking movie made in Mexico, about a girl who was married to an unfaithful soldier, who wound up in a brothel for some reason. Imelda had found it tedious. A woman who refused to develop any skill she couldn't do on her back was not, to her mind, an interesting woman.

And already, they had started making singing pictures.

Well, at least she could be fairly certain that she wouldn't see Nesto end up in a -

She stopped as she rounded the shallow corner toward the ticket booth and saw the poster.

The twins were right. There was no missing it.

Ernesto de la Cruz dominated a huge poster. He was giving his smarmy old grin, the one he used to seduce stupid girls here in the square.

And in his hands was…

"You okay?" the ticket girl asked. "Eh, chico… you look like you're sick."

"I just need to sit down," Imelda said, and now her voice _was_ trembling, but it wasn't high or feminine. It wasn't _anything_.

"I can let you in the lobby…"

"No. No, give me a ticket." She jerked her chin at the poster. "I'll see this while I sit. And think." She pulled out the money and handed it over.

The girl gave her a mistrustful look, but gave her the ticket. "You should have some water. But no food. I… I don't want to clean it up."

"I'm all right," Imelda snapped.

She crossed into the dark lobby, pausing to let her eyes adjust. The great doors, framed with wooden carvings and flanked by brass posts, yawned open in front of her. The rows of seats, unchanged since long before pictures moved, were mostly empty this early, though one couple was hiding up in a balcony. Imelda could feel the ghost of her girl-self here, running up and down this aisle, laughing as Héctor chased her to the stage. She could hear herself belting out La Llorona for the soldiers who had come through town while Héctor played. Ernesto had never played here. He thought the money was in the square, and he was right about that, but the acoustics in here were too beautiful to skip, and she and Héctor had come here night after night, while Ernesto was in the cantinas, and it was here behind the curtains that she had first really known him and…

The wild echoes of her childhood rang silently through the room, and she suddenly wanted to leave, to go outside and rip away her disguise and scream, and scream, and scream.

Instead, she sat down in a shadowy corner and pressed her hands over her face. She didn't know how long she stayed like that. She heard people coming in around her for the matinee, and it was when she was nudged that she finally pretended to wake up.

The movie began.

With Coco's song.

It was bastardized and blustery, but it was Coco's, and Ernesto was singing it, and he was playing…

Ernesto was playing the


	4. Chapter 4

4

 _1917_  
guitar," Imelda said.

"I need a new guitar?" Héctor repeated. "But this one is fine. You keep it in such good shape."

She rolled her eyes. "Will you let me give you a wedding present, Héctor?"

"You're already giving me the best wedding present. I say thank you in my prayers every day." He glanced at her belly, which looked no different than it had two months ago, though of course, what was inside it had changed everything very rapidly.

Imelda had felt a hundred different, conflicting things when she realized why she was feeling ill. Embarrassment had been one of them; she'd made exactly the same foolish choice she'd judged other girls for making, and here she was, in the same place they had been. And there was fear, of course there was fear. Her life was about to be radically changed, and besides, the idea of what was going to happen to her body in a few months was terrifying in itself. But there was also a kind of giddiness sometimes, an almost silly desire to be domestic and matronly. Sometimes she felt absurdly old and wise, like she was already an ancient matron, able to dispense the right answers to all questions. There was occasionally a sense of weird triumph, like she'd won some amorous battle to keep Héctor close to her forever, which was particularly strange, as he wasn't exactly fighting against her on that. And there was the plain sense of awe that one of their breathless, mad encounters had somehow made a person. All of those feelings existed together for Imelda, one or another rising up at different times, none ever going away completely.

For Héctor, it was simpler. He was over the moon. The fact that they were seventeen and eighteen years old seemed not to faze him at all. He saw all of it as a special sign from heaven that everyone deserved a family, even a pair of poor orphans who sang for pesos. He meant it when he said it was a gift.

"I think we gave each other that one, Héctor." She bit her lip. "Besides, this is the one I was going to give you anyway, from the first time you asked."

"Last year? You said no then!"

"Well, you had to prove yourself, didn't you?" She smiled. "And I didn't say no. I said ask again later. But I started making this that night." She lifted the case up onto the table in the shack where Héctor had inexplicably brought her tonight for a picnic. It was the old shoemaker's hut, and it still had the pleasant smell of old leather, even though Bautista had gone to war three years ago and never come back. "Take it. I'm certainly not giving it to anyone else, and you'd best not, either."

He feigned a look of horror, then gently touched the handmade leather case. Imelda had made it as well, in a fit of delight at his happiness with their predicament. Despite the fact that she was singing every night now, she still enjoyed working with her hands, and did it well. Sewing had been a good supplement to music, where money was concerned, and she could do it late at night. She could also keep them both in costumes.

"It's a beautiful case," Héctor said, running his fingers along the twined hearts she'd put onto it.

"Well, will you open it and look at the guitar?"

"I'm opening it! I just enjoy all of it." He opened the case slowly, reverently, then gasped deeply. "Oh, Imelda… Imelda, it's beautiful…" He touched the fretboard and let his fingers linger on the mother-of-pearl inlays in the head, making the shape of a skull. She'd even splurged on a bit of gold leaf to replicate the gold tooth he'd gotten after he and Ernesto had been beaten up for their earnings one day. Ernesto had paid for it, since his family had money and he'd felt it was his fault. "How did you afford… how could you make…"

"It turns out I'm a good singer, and also very good at saving my money. And I did a bit of mending." This was an understatement, and Héctor had to know it - the mother-of-pearl alone had taken the full price of two gown repairs, six ties, and a full embroidery job on a jacket - but he had the good grace not to push the subject. Her money was her own. They had agreed on that from the start. She was better at handling it than he was, and unlike most other men of Imelda's acquaintance, he was willing to admit it. "Are you going to play it, or just look at it?"

"Look at it for now. Imelda, I just can't believe… this is really mine? From you? You made it?"

"Do you like it?"

"I love it. I love it more for coming from you, for being your own work. You're amazing. Is there anything you can't do?" He lifted it out of the case, but didn't play yet. He just held it up in the golden sunlight and watched it gleam while his hand ran maddeningly around the curves of its body.

"Will you play it, please?"

He nodded, then pulled himself up to sit on the table, almost fearfully bringing the guitar around to rest on his knee. He ran his fingers lightly over the strings, producing a soft chord, then gently picked out a tune. "This is a perfect guitar," he said, his fingers gaining confidence as he played. "My perfect guitar. It fits me exactly right."

"Good."

He stopped playing, laying his hand over the strings. "I have a present for you, too. It's not as fancy as this. It doesn't look like anything really. I…" He looked up at the window. "This place is ours."

"What?"

"I know, I should have asked. We should have looked. But I had a chance, and I was afraid I'd lose it." He got down, laying the guitar tenderly on the table. "I got it for a song. Literally. That stupid Juanita song."

"I don't understand…"

He looked around. "You remember old Santiago? They call him Chicharron?"

"The vagrant?" Imelda asked, frowning.

"He's a good person. But he wasn't a vagrant. Turns out old Bautista was his brother-in-law. He was the only heir. And he got this place. He didn't want it. He's moving on. He likes to be on the move. I asked what I could buy it for… just thinking about it. We need someplace. And he said he would sell it to me for the price of hearing 'Juanita.' Says it reminds him of good times in the cantina, and the lady he wanted to marry."

"Wasn't that song about…"

"A really ugly girl. I don't know if she was ugly or not, but he says it used to make her laugh because her name was Juanita. She died."

"Of what?"

"The war, what else?"

Imelda, who had assumed something quite different, chastised herself. "Sorry. I'm… not always a nice person."

Héctor made a face. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, I… I assumed…" Imelda shrugged. "You remember Teresa? She came by and said I was a judgmental… well, a not nice word… and a hypocrite to boot for judging her." She had _also_ said that sooner or later "that besotted idiot" would figure it out and move on to warmer climes, but Imelda didn't add that. She knew Héctor would deny it and assure her of his undying love, but it would seem much less real when he said it than when he just looked at her. When he looked at her, she couldn't doubt. When he spoke, she sometimes remembered that he could be a bit of a charmer. She shook her head. "Anyway, maybe I _am_ a little judgmental."

"Eh, maybe. So what? It's who you are. I love all the things that you are, so I love that, too." He raised his eyebrows. "You haven't said anything about…" He pointed around the room. "Are you angry? That I got it without asking. Because I can sell it, too. He even left Bautista's shoemaking things here, I could probably get money for those, too, and we could find somewhere you like - "

"No, it's good, Héctor." In truth, she hadn't really looked at it yet. The setting sun came through the open door and the wide windows in a very pleasant way, and there was actually a lot of room. There was space beyond the back of the building where they might have a garden, or even build the house out. There was a nice well house out back to give them water and keep things cool. It was a bit run down and dirty, and Imelda could definitely see the piles of old shoemakers' tools in poorly hung cupboards along the back wall, but it wasn't a disaster. "We can paint it something bright, and we'll bring in music, which will make it perfect."

He gave a relieved sigh, and she wondered if he really had been _afraid_ of how she'd react, if she had given him reason to think she would unleash her fury on him. She supposed she had, over the years of their acquaintance, though she couldn't remember ever losing her temper at him in particular. "Good, because I don't know how to shop for a house. Or land. And with the war, who knows who owns what half the time, anyway. They want to redistribute, but I doubt anyone will bother with this land. Nothing to farm, unless it grows shoe leather." He went to the east side of the room and opened a squeaky door. "This is a nice big room, look, the twins could have their own space. Maybe they can even build little houses outside when they get older, but they wouldn't need to live alone. I know you were worried about that." He barely gave Imelda time to poke her head into the long room before happily moving on, caught in a dream now. "And this one," he said, "will be for the baby. Look. It has northern light, so it won't be too bright for her. When she's old enough not to be with us all the time, of course."

"She?"

"Or he. Either is good, but I want her to be just like you. I'd feel a little silly spoiling a boy with ribbons and pretty dresses."

Imelda grinned. "All right."

"And then…" He bit his lip. "Well… for… _us_." He moved further along the north wall and opened the door to a room with a grand view of the well, the dusty yard, and the alley that led to Mariachi Plaza. An old bed leaned up against the wall. Neither of them quite looked at it. They had never quite made it to a shared bed, no matter how much else they'd shared. "I can fix that up," he said. "And we'll paint the walls, and put up curtains, and… well, make it a proper room for a lady."

"I can think of a few people who might not call me a lady."

"You are a _queen_ , mi amor." He bowed and kissed her hand, without a trace of irony.

"You're trying to charm me," Imelda said, rolling her eyes.

It didn't even get an answering smile. He held her hand and looked into her eyes. "No, I'm not. I won't let anyone say you're not a lady. Not even you."

Absurdly, Imelda felt like crying. She turned away and swallowed hard a few times, going to the window. "Purple, I think," she said, finally looking back at him. "For the curtains. Like the ones in the theater."

He gave her a skeptical look, then finally grinned. "Yes, they do seem to be good luck for us. And royal, for your highness."

" _Now_ you're charming me again, Héctor."

"Are you charmed?"

"Completely."

They spent the next half hour in a pleasant fantasy, doing a bit of cleaning around the shack and talking about all of the things they meant to do here. Héctor boxed up the shoemaking tools, with a thought to selling them later, but Imelda said she might like to keep them around. She'd enjoyed working with leather to make the guitar case. Perhaps someday, she would make them dancing shoes. ("Your crazy wishes are my ardent commands, my love.") As the sky turned bright red outside, Héctor first reached for his old guitar, then instead picked up the new one. "Shall I introduce it tonight as my wedding present?"

"We haven't had the wedding yet, Héctor. I know we're a little mixed up about the order, but I think they may notice that there hasn't been a wedding."

"So, it's an early present. But I won't play it yet if you want me to wait. That is always my rule."

Imelda bit her lip, and felt a wide smile coming up. "Yes, I want you to play it. I can't wait to hear it in the theater. I can't wait to sing tonight."

They left together, hand in hand, the wedding guitar strapped over Héctor's back. "What are we going to do when the baby comes?" he asked. "I think you'll want to take time off."

"Well, probably just before she comes, I won't belong on stage. But after? I think she will just come up and sing with us. She will have marvelously strong lungs, especially considering how early she will be born."

"Mm, yes, practically miraculous." He moved closer and slipped his arm around her. "There are many such miracles in Santa Cecilia, Imelda. Don't worry about what people will say. I doubt any of them have a family tree so clean that no one was born early in suspiciously good health."

"True. You and I may have the cleanest family trees in town." She smiled at him.

He smiled back, but this time, he looked a little troubled.

"What is it, Héctor?"

"Do you ever wonder what we'll give our children?" He shook his head. "I look at Nesto and the others, and how their families help them out. They're already halfway to having good lives, just because they have someone to give them tables and chairs and stories and rules. It's like we're all on a cliff, only they're halfway up, because they have a ladder, and we're standing there at the bottom."

"Every family starts somewhere," Imelda said firmly. "We will be the start of ours, Héctor. Let them have their rickety ladders. We will get out chisels and make stairs in the cliff, so our children will never fall off."

"And we'll let other orphans climb them, too?"

"Of course. It's only fair."

"Good." He shook his head. "Well, that's enough serious talk. Let's start building stairs by making lots of money tonight."

"I hope you don't start worrying more about money than music."

"I don't. But let's be honest, Imelda. We are going to need money."

"Let me worry about money."

"Imelda…"

"Come on. We're almost there." She broke into a run, and a moment later, Héctor followed, catching her and swinging her around in the dying light of the day. They were laughing when they came through the stage door, and the stage manager rolled his eyes at them, as he always did. "Wild children," he called them.

Wild children.

Héctor led Imelda out onto the stage. He usually contented himself with a simple, "I am Héctor, and this lovely creature is Imelda, and she is going to make you weep for beauty." Tonight, he brought out his new guitar, and introduced it, telling everyone that it was his early wedding present from the queen, who was all things wonderful and amazing, and who made the moon shine and the stars glow, and…

"Oh, stop it, and play," Imelda said, laughing too hard to sing at first.

But of course, she sang. She sang for the money she made, but mostly she sang for the sheer joy of it, for the warm and steady glow the music made around her and Héctor and the little stranger they had created between them. She sang because Héctor's music called her to sing, because the words he'd written were meant only for her, because it was his heart and his soul, and they were also hers. She sang to the strangers in the seats, but mostly she sang to Héctor, her husband (in all but the most technical of senses). And it was theirs, only theirs, and no one could


	5. Chapter 5

5

 _1931_  
ever come between us, my darling!" Ernesto de la Cruz said on screen, to the silly looking comedienne who was supposed to be his wife. He was looking over his shoulder at the man playing his friend, as if to say, "Help me out, amigo."

Coco knew the dialogue. It was her fourth time at the show. She'd skipped school to come as soon as she'd seen Papá's guitar. She didn't know why. It didn't make her happy.

But the songs.

The guitar.

Papá was gone.

She had always thought so. Papá would have come home to her if he could have. But knowing it was different from seeing Tío Nesto carrying his guitar and singing his songs.

 _Her_ songs.

She had almost not recognized it at first, it was so… different. She was glad it was different. She couldn't have borne him singing it like Papá. This was a song for strangers.

But Papá would never have let him use it. He had told her once that there were songs for Tío Nesto, and songs for the family. "This is Coco's song," he'd told her as he taught it to her. "We will sing it together every night, and no one else will sing it, except maybe Mamá. And that way, we will be together!"

And at first, Mamá _had_ sung, despite being angry. She'd thought she was hiding it, but Coco had heard the fighting before Papá left, the pleading for him not to go. It was fighting in whispers, not screams, because they thought she was asleep, but she had never been able to sleep when they weren't happy.

 _"It's a chance, mi amor. A real chance. It's not forever…"_

 _"We need you, Héctor. We need you more than the world does."_

 _"I'm not leaving you! I'm just… there's nowhere to work here. I don't have a thousand gifts like you do. I only have the one. And I can't use it here in Santa Cecilia…"_

 _"You're such a liar! You want only to play for the crowds. You want the applause. The laughs, being Nesto's performing monkey. Your talent is a gift from God, Héctor. You're better than the Carpa shows!"_

And back and forth. Coco didn't know how long it had gone on. She was halfway past four when he left, and she didn't _think_ it had been going on at the last birthday they'd spent together. Mamá had even offered to move to Mexico City, where Papá could find work with an orchestra or some other respectable thing, where he could stay with them. Papá would disappear for a few days on road shows and come home, and there would be a fight about longer tours that Tío Nesto wanted to go on. They would make up always. Mamá only fought because she loved him, and Papá only fought because he wanted to take care of them. So they fought, and then Mamá would say she loved him, and then Coco would fall asleep happy, because they were happy together again. And in the morning, they would all go around the house, and Papá would play a song, and Mamá would sing, and all was right. They played a game, where each of them would find a "blessing" - a pretty flower, or the line of the hills in the distance, or the sound of a perfect note on the guitar. Then Papá would say that Mamá's beauty was the blessing of the house, and Mamá would say that Papá's music was a blessing and a gift, and then they would both pick her up between them and she would laugh, and they would say together, "And our biggest blessing is our little _angelita preciosa,_ our little Coco!"

She never told Mamá how much she remembered about it. She worked hard to remember sometimes, writing things down and drawing pictures, and of course singing her song. She had once, in a fit of temper about not being able to dance anymore, asked why Mamá was so cruel. Tío Felipe had taken her aside later and said that Mamá had a broken heart.

"Have you ever cut your finger?" he'd asked.

Coco had allowed that she had.

"So you know, if you put your finger in lemon juice, it hurts more, right? That is music to your mamá. Lemon juice on her poor cut-up heart."

Until that moment, Coco had believed that Mamá really had forgotten Papá, that she had stopped feeling anything at all, for anything other than her beloved shoes. After that, she'd looked at Mamá with new eyes. And as she'd gotten bigger, she understood Mamá more than Mamá herself would like, if she knew. She saw how tenderly she folded Papá's old jacket, and how she kept the letters until Coco was old enough to take responsibility for them herself, even the hurtful ones that came after Mexico City. _I am saving them so Coco can understand someday,_ Coco was sure she told herself, but Coco knew better. She saved them because they were _his_. Because his hands had touched them, and there weren't enough things left that she could say that about.

 _And then there's me,_ she thought. _Mamá loves me for me, yes, but she loves me also because I'm Papá. Because I am the happiness they used to have. Because the very biggest blessing of all was their little Coco._

It was a big thought, a complicated thought. She had begun to have it when she was much too small for it, and oh, there had been fights. It had seemed unfair that Coco should have to suffer her mother's broken heart instead of Mamá suffering it herself. The fights weren't just about the music, but about everything for a few years. What subjects she should do well in for school. What she could listen to when she was outside the hacienda. What kind of clothes she could wear, and who her friends could be. What she would be when she grew up.

The fights stopped two years ago, when she was twelve. In a furious temper about something she barely remembered now, Coco had screamed, "I will go after Papá! No wonder he hated you! I hate you, too!"

Mamá had grabbed at her throat as though she'd been struck there, and she had turned on her heel and gone to the workshop. Coco heard the machinery begin to whir and thought, _Of course, she goes back to work…_

And then she had heard something crash.

She'd run to the workshop, and she'd found Mamá - Mamá who was strong and cruel and full of pride - slumped on the floor beside the workbench. Her hands were curled deep in her hair, and she looked like she was screaming.

Coco's own heart had broken that day. It had simply burst open, and she had knelt beside Mamá and wept, and they had held one another, and that was when Coco had realized that Mamá knew, too. That she knew in her heart that Papá was gone, that he couldn't come back, that something terrible had happened. But she would never admit it. Anger gave her strength to fight against a society that did not make it easy for a woman alone. Grief made her crazy and not able to do what she needed to do. And acceptance would mean moving on, which she would _never_ do.

So Coco kept her secrets. She was a daughter to Mamá as well as to Papá, and a daughter's responsibility was to not make her mother weep.

Also, it had frightened her, this idea that Mamá had her limits, that she was barely holding it together sometimes. It was easier to think of Mamá as a force of nature, implacable and invincible.

It wasn't always easy to keep secrets. If the sisters reported to Mamá that Coco wasn't in school, there would be explanations to come, and the idea that she was here, watching Tío Nesto's movie, of all things… She would have to think of something else she might have been doing. Flirting with some boy, maybe, or planning a bank robbery (two things which might get her in roughly equal amounts of trouble, but would be more acceptable than what she was actually doing).

On screen, Tío Nesto started singing "The World Is My Family." That was all right. It was what Papá had called a Tío Nesto song, one written just for their act. Tío Nesto could sing those as much as Papá could, though it was strange that he would be the one singing it, since he had a family here in Santa Cecilia. His mother sometimes had her shoes fixed in the shop and acted like they were old friends, though Mamá would always steam about it for an hour after she left.

So, the Tío Nesto songs were all right. Coco even liked them sometimes, though she would never tell Mamá this, even if she were ever forced to admit having seen the movie. They were light and fun and Papá's voice just as much as the special songs were. He had loved to have fun, and Coco had seen his act with Tío Nesto, and she remembered the way he'd laughed and been full of joy after being on stage, no matter what Mamá said about performing monkeys. If she were allowed to, she would have brought back the Victrola and played the records, and they would have made her smile, she knew.

But the movie itself… that was different. The movie, _El Camino a Casa_ , was a slow, painful stab to her heart.

Tío Nesto played a foundling who had great musical talent, but wanted to escape his boring home town. When he grew up, he had a shrew of a wife who wouldn't let him go, and best friend who helped him escape the little dungeon of a house over and over. Most of the plot was a slapstick comedy about how the wife was trying to hunt him down at his various shows, and how his friend Don Hidalgo kept running interference. In the end, it turned out that Don Hidalgo was really skimming all of his money, and didn't want him to take a movie job down in Buenos Aires, because he couldn't cut himself in outside of Mexico… for some reason. So he tried to poison Tío Nesto, but he got caught.

The movie would end with Tío Nesto in Argentina, and he'd be singing "Remember Me" again (in the story, it was the same performance, and the whole movie had been a flashback). His shrew-wife (played by a fat woman with hair on her chin) would track him down one more time - how she made the eight thousand mile trek was never explained - but he would be able to send her on "the road home" with all the money she could ever want, and she would never bother him again. She would wander off down the road counting her money, and not even hear him when he asked if she wanted to stay for supper.

Of a little girl, or great blessings, or the wife's own beautiful voice, there were no signs. Of a woman weeping in a shoe workshop while her daughter held her and promised never to leave, there was no hint.

Most of the audience laughed in all the right places, but in every showing she'd been at, Coco had noticed more than one person shifting uncomfortably. Santa Cecilia was a small town with a perfectly functional memory. Down near the front, there was a mariachi in a hat that looked like Papá's old hat, and he looked like he had his head halfway buried in his lap from embarrassment.

The last number finally came. Tío Nesto finished with a flourish, letting his voice go up to a high falsetto on the last note as they showed the shrew-wife walking away and counting her money, dancing along to the tune. Half the audience was singing along as well, as they gathered their things to go out to whatever waited in the rest of the day.

Coco stayed in her seat, as she had at the other showings. She was thinking, as she also had. Is this what her family had looked like to Tío Nesto? Like jailors trying to cash in on Papá's talent? She was certain it wasn't how _Papá_ had seen them, but the rest of the world? He had married Mamá so young, and there had been Coco right away. (She had done the math, though she had not shared this fact with Mamá.) Would they look at this talented boy and think, _What a shame to have thrown it all away because some girl threw herself at him! Poor thing, to have to take on responsibility for a baby before he even could make his dreams come true!_

Coco wasn't sure - Papá wouldn't have been the only young father in Santa Cecilia - but she had a feeling that such things might have been whispered. Mamá was respected (mostly), but she was not liked. Papá had been someone who brought them joy. Oh, not great joy. He was not Tío Nesto, and mostly stayed in the shadows, but she remembered the way they had laughed at his antics when he did come into the light. Tía Ceci, before she went away, had sometimes grumbled at Mamá, and looked at Coco like she was an interference of some kind. She'd once even said, "That girl doesn't even look like Héctor," which had caused Mamá to chase her out of the shop, waving a chancla at her as if she were a disobedient little girl. At the time, Coco hadn't really understood why, but Mamá had sat her down last year to explain a few things, and that's when she'd realized why it was such a terrible insult.

By the time the lights came up fully, she was alone in the theater except for the mariachi in front. He was still slumped forward, fists pressed to his eyes, and…

Coco's eyes widened.

It wasn't just a hat _like_ Papá's. It was the same hat. The same jacket, with the fine embroidery on the back. The same gleaming white sleeves.

And that could only be…

She looked at the back door of the theater, part of her wanting to simply flee back to the hacienda and pretend she hadn't seen. It would be kinder, in a way, if she did. If she could let Mamá go on believing that she hadn't seen anything.

She was still frozen, partway sitting, and partway standing, trying to decide what to do, when Mamá decided for her.

She stood up and turned around, and for a moment, she was as frozen as Coco. They looked at each other guiltily.

Then Mamá drew herself up and stormed up the aisle, taking Coco by the elbow when she reached the last row.

"Mamá!"

"I don't want to hear it, Socorro." Mamá led the way out of the theater, not exactly pulling Coco, because Coco had no strength to resist. She was shaking from head to toe, not sure what she wanted, or what she meant to say. She was simply swept along in Mamá's wake, as helpless as a leaf caught in a whirlwind.

They pushed quickly outside, ignoring the looks from the ticket girl, who would probably be full of tales about how Mamá Imelda's little girl left the theater with a shady-looking mariachi. Mamá led them through the narrow alley, past the baker's shop, past the carpenter, into the courtyard of the hacienda. Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe had left their tools around from the room they were building, and Mamá kicked them out of the way. She opened the back door and went into the parlor, sitting Coco down on the ancient lavender chair.

"Wait here," she said, and stormed upstairs.

It did not occur to Coco not to wait, though she could have left freely. There was time for her to make it halfway into town, maybe all the way - Mamá was upstairs for what seemed a long time, slamming drawers and doors and occasionally making a furious kind of sound that wasn't quite a snort or a sob, but resembled both of them. Coco might have made it all the way to school and begged the sisters to intervene for her, as they had when they'd told Mamá that she was _required_ to learn sacred music. Maybe she could have asked a saint or two to intervene as well. It couldn't have hurt.

But she could not have done any of those things, not really, because in reality, she was still flailing, trying to grasp what was happening, what she had seen on the screen, and worse, what _Mamá_ had seen on the screen. What it had _meant_.

Mamá finally came downstairs. She had taken off Papá's suit, and was wearing her work dress now, though she hadn't put on her shoemaker's apron. Her hair was down and loose around her shoulders, which it almost never was. Coco could see the bends of the usual braids.

She was forcing herself to be calm.

She sat down in the chair across from Coco and said, "All right, Socorro. I've calmed down. It's time to talk. Are you ready


	6. Chapter 6

6

 _1921_  
to see your Papá look very silly?"

Coco giggled and poked at the make-up Papá was wearing. It was almost like Day of the Dead, but he was painted up as a silly clown instead of a skeleton. Other people were painted as monsters, and some people were wearing animal masks.

"To scare away the evil spirits!" Papá had told her this morning, while he painted her monster face on.

"For a bit of fun before Lent," Mamá had said. She was dressed up to be part of a feather dance. She had already done that this morning, and Coco and Papá had clapped and danced themselves on the sidelines.

Mamá said that Coco had done this last year, but she was only three then, and she didn't remember. She was a big girl now, and she was very good at remembering. She could sing whole songs from memory - not just the middle parts, but the _verses_ , and she never forgot a dance step Mamá taught her, or where her fingers went on the toy guitar. She had even memorized a whole little book about a monkey and a crocodile.

 _Snap, snap, snap._

She laughed. Papá's hand was by her face, his fingers snapping playfully, and he was wiggling his head back and forth. "Where is Coco's mind? Are you ready to see Papá and Tío Nesto look very silly?"

"Very, _very_ silly," Mamá said, coming back to their blanket in the square with a pitcher full of fresh water from the pump. "And do you really want to teach her to laugh when boys snap their fingers at her?"

"He's not a boy!" Coco said. "He's Papá!"

Papá stuck his tongue out playfully and snapped the fingers on both hands in front of Mamá's face, grinning until Mamá finally laughed and pushed his hands away, weaving her fingers through his to stop the snapping.

She kissed his knuckles and rolled her eyes. "Héctor… you're sure this show is all right for her?"

"I made sure of it. No wrong jokes. I told Tío Nesto that it was _Papá_ Héctor he'd answer to if he tried to sneak one in."

"Good." Mamá kissed him and he squeezed her hands. "I haven't seen your show in months. I'm looking forward to it."

"To the Carpas?" Papá teased, looking around at the tents the showmen had set up for the Carnival show. "You hate the Carpas."

"Why?" Coco asked, interested in this question. Everyone loved the Carpas, the silly shows that played up and down the country. All of the other children were happy that Tío Nesto had gotten some of the famous families to come to town and do shows. Papá said that they were going to have a festival every year for all the Carpas to come to Santa Cecilia from now on. ("Oh, I don't know about from now on," Tío Nesto said . "We will have to go to other places if we mean for everyone to keep coming here.")

"I don't hate them," Mamá said. "But Tío Nesto gets to look very grown-up and important while Papá has to be a silly clown."

"I like clowns," Coco offered.

"You see?" Papá said. "My favorite audience likes clowns. I will be a funny clown for my Coco today."

Mamá laughed and kissed him again, then reached into her purse for the makeup kit. "I've smeared you," she said. "Tío Nesto will not be happy."

"Well, don't fix it yet. I'm holding out for more smearing." He leaned in and rubbed his big nose against hers, smearing his make-up over hers, then he picked up Coco and did the same to her. "Do you love your silly Papá? He loves his silly Coco!"

Coco nodded and laughed, then squirmed away and tried to stand on her head. It didn't work. She fell over.

"What are you doing?" Mamá asked, righting her.

"I'm a clown, too!"

"A grand ambition!" Papá said. "Shall you come up with us? What do you think, Mamá Imelda… they would love her! And you can come, too! Wouldn't everyone love to hear Mamá sing? All the best Carpas are run by families!"

Coco nodded enthusiastically, but a shadow fell over her.

Tío Nesto smiled. She couldn't see his eyes, because the bright sun made it dark under his hat, but she could see his teeth. "Héctor… it's a little late to change the line-up for today!"

"Oh, they would love it, Nesto!"

"I haven't rehearsed," Mamá said. "Go on. Get up there and be a clown."

"His make-up needs repairing," Tío Nesto said.

Papá sighed. "All right."

"Wait," Mamá said, and grabbed hold of Papá and gave him a huge, long kiss. Under the hat-shadow, Tío Nesto made a funny face. Mamá pulled away, grinning, then began to dab at the make-up around Papá's mouth, which was almost gone.

"You're pretty messy, too, mi amor," Papá said.

"I'm not going up front. Go on, now."

"As always, your wish is my command." Papá bowed, and marched off like he was going to a battle. He waved backward, and Coco could see Mamá's lipstick mark on his hand, right over where his wedding ring sparkled.

Tío Nesto looked at Mamá and said, "I'm surprised you came at all, Imelda."

Mamá's smile disappeared. "You'd best get up on stage, Ernesto. You wouldn't want to be late for your own show."

"Well, I'm glad you came." He smiled more broadly. "You'll see how much the audience loves him when you kindly allow him to perform."

He walked away, and Coco frowned. "Why is Tío Nesto angry?"

"Tío Nesto wants to take a long trip with Papá. I want Papá to be home with us. Don't you?"

Coco nodded hard. Papá sometimes went away for a whole week at a time, and she didn't like that at all. She liked it when he played his guitar to her to sing their lullaby and told her stories and held her and sang to her until she fell asleep. She liked his funny games, and she liked the way Mamá laughed when they were together, and the way he sometimes whispered in her ear and it made her giggle and blush. She liked the way Mamá would sometimes almost jump into Papá's arms, and he'd swing her around the same way he swung Coco, though the kisses he gave her afterward were different.

Mamá sighed and looked up at the stage, where Papá was talking to a band leader and Tío Nesto was waggling his eyes at a pretty lady. "What if we went with him?" she asked no one in particular, then looked at Coco. "Do you want to go away from home?"

Coco frowned. Go away from home? Where else would she be?

Mamá shook her head. "Ah, never mind. It is too late for me to be wandering around in a tent show, and that's no place for a little girl, anyway. Papá knows that when he's thinking straight. We can't be wild children anymore." She watched the stage fondly now, but looked a little sad, too, as Papá showed a marimba player a melody he'd written. "Papá still is wild when he plays his music."

"Wild?" Coco asked.

"Very free," Mamá said. "Like a wild animal."

"Like a rabbit? I like rabbits."

"Why not? A rabbit."

Coco imagined Papá as a rabbit, now that he was jumping around on the stage, setting things up. It was funny. She would make him rabbit ears later.

He had climbed up on a ladder to check something above the stage, and he did a back flip to get back down. He landed on his feet, but made a show of jumping around and pretending to trip over a xolo dog who'd wandered up on stage. The dog barked merrily, and Papá offered it a hand, like he was asking it to dance. It gave back a paw, then stood up on its hind legs. Papá put its front paws on his shoulders, and danced a little tango.

"Perro está bailando," Coco sang. "Y mi papá está cantando…"

Mamá laughed. "Oh, you're going to be a songwriter too now, like Papá?"

Coco nodded.

"I will teach you to read music while we learn your regular letters," Mamá promised. "How will that be?"

"I will write Papá a song to sing!"

"Your papá will be so proud his head will blow up like a balloon and he will float around on the ceiling."

Coco laughed.

A few minutes later, Papá and Tío Nesto started their part of the show. Everyone else used all the same songs, but Papá had written new things for their act. Tío Nesto sang a pretty song called "The Mountains and the Marigolds," then they did a funny act where Tío Nesto was a barber and Papá couldn't decide how he wanted to have his hair cut (and kept stopping Tío Nesto before he could close the scissors). Then they sang "Poco Loco," which everyone in Santa Cecilia always liked. The new people with the other Carpas seemed to like it, too. Then they had another funny scene about something called a "census." There were jokes about someone called Obregón, who Mamá whispered was the president. Tío Nesto was going around and asking questions, like "What sort of person are you?" He _meant_ , Are you Spanish or are you an Indian or are you mixed or a foreigner? But Papá pretended he didn't know what the question was, and kept saying he was things like a bird, or coyote, or a fish, and then acting like those animals. The xolo dog wandered back on stage during all of this, and Papá worked it right in, announcing that he was a xolo dog himself, and that this was his sister. Tío Nesto looked annoyed at this, but maybe that was just his part.

Coco thought this was very funny, because Papá had said the same things in the kitchen at their house when he read a story about the census in the newspaper. ("How can I tell them what I don't know? I'm of the blanket-in-the-plaza people!") He and Mamá had tried to look at each other and guess what sort of parents they had. Mamá said she was a princesita, obviously, and her mother was the queen. ("Mi amor, you are an empress," Papá said.) Papá decided he was one of the Zapotec Cloud People. His father was a stormcloud and his mother was a jaguar. ("It must have been an exciting courtship," Mamá said. "But your mother should be something musical. A songbird. Maybe something with a very big beak." Papá had stuck his tongue out and they had laughed. "I worship her, and she mocks me," he'd said, pretending to cry.)

The skit ended with Tío Nesto pretending to weep in frustration at not being able to get a straight answer out of Papá. Papá took his census paper and started asking him the questions instead. They finished it all up by singing "The World Is My Family" together, and then they sang another of Papá's serious songs, "My Beautiful Town," which everyone from Santa Cecilia clapped for. Tío Nesto went up and bowed, and they threw flowers at him. Papá picked the flowers up, and after he disappeared backstage, he came out a few minutes later and poured all of them into Mamá's lap. Tío Nesto was still up front, talking to the crowd.

Mamá kissed Papá, but shook her head. "You write the songs, he takes the bows?"

"He can have _all_ the bows," Papá said, scooping Coco up, and then sitting down neatly with her in his lap. She cuddled up. "I have Coco and Mamá Imelda." He showered kisses over Coco's face until she laughed. "Did you like Papá's clowning?" he asked. "Did you laugh and laugh?"

She nodded. Papá was full of fun and energy now, almost dancing again, even though he was sitting down. She wasn't surprised when he stood back up, picked her up again, and swung her around to a tune that was playing in his head.

"Shall Mamá dance with us?" he asked. "Shall we bring her up here into the clouds with us?"

"The clouds, is it?" Mamá asked, reaching her hands up. Papá pulled on one and Coco pulled on the other, and she came up gracefully. She let go of Coco's hand, and twirled around, her hand spinning in Papá's. "Go on, Héctor. Sing whatever cloud song you're hearing. Share it with the rest of us."

"I've been thinking of it since we talked about Cloud People," Papá said. "I'll play, you dance." He passed Coco over to Mamá and picked up his guitar. The song was a pretty one, with light runs of notes and words about wisps of spun sugar around the mountaintops, and how they had all stepped down out of nothing and become humans together. Coco didn't have to ask to know this was a family song, not a Tío Nesto song. Mamá set Coco down, and they danced together, hand in hand, making up soft little steps like clouds climbing up the side of a mountain.

Papá had been singing for two whole verses when Tío Nesto came over with a little man who wore round, shiny glasses that flashed in the sun. Tío Nesto was waving his arms wildly, as if they wouldn't notice him otherwise.

"Héctor!" he called. "I have good news! This is


	7. Chapter 7

7

 _1931_  
Papá's song," Coco finished, willing her voice not to shake. "I heard Papá's song. I wanted to hear it more."

"So you saw the guitar, and you heard the song, and you skipped school for four days to go to the pictures." Coco didn't answer. She'd been over her entire transgression. It was up to Mamá now. Mamá stood up from her chair and went to the window, absently winding her hair up into its usual bun, though with no pins, it fell back down when she let go and put her hands on her hips. "And what, exactly, were you planning to tell me?"

"I don't know." Coco bit her lip. "What were _you_ going to tell _me_?"

Mamá glared at her, then turned to the window again, resting her clasped hands wearily on the back of her neck. "I won't pretend this isn't your business."

"Thank you, Mamá."

"Don't imagine that you'll get away with skipping school. We _will_ come back to that." Mamá looked out at the garden for a long time, then said, in a quieter and gentler voice than Coco had expected, "What do you want to do, mija?"

"Do…?"

"About all of this." Mamá rubbed her head. "De la Cruz is singing your father's songs, and I didn't see Héctor's name. Did you see it?"

"No." Coco bit her lip and looked down at her feet. "And I was looking. I'm sorry, Mamá."

"Sorry for what? Of course you were looking. This is the first sign I've seen of him since that last letter. I was looking, too."

"You're not angry?"

"About that? Of course not. It's natural. He left a lot of questions behind."

"You're not angry that I… that I care about the questions?"

This didn't get an immediate answer. Instead, Mamá picked at the sleeves of her dress for a minute, and wound her hair up again, holding it still at the base of her neck with her laced fingers. She took a few breaths like that, then let it go. It fell in a clump this time, staying in a loose knot. "I can't be both mother and father to you, Coco, no matter how much I try."

"Mamá…"

She held up her hand. "Of course you want answers. _I_ want answers."

 _No, you don't,_ Coco almost said. _You don't want answers, because you know the answer, as much as I do, and you don't want to know it. You don't want to know it because… because…_

But that answer had always eluded Coco. Oh, she understood about the fear and the grief, but there was something else at play, something in Mamá, something about the truth that was outside what Coco could see.

"The point is," Mamá said, "that you have decisions to make, haven't you?"

"Just me?"

"I am his wife. I could become not his wife. The priest has suggested annulment. Moving on."

"Marrying someone else?"

"I'm sure that's the padre's thought. Have lots of children. I'm still young." She shook her head. "I don't want to marry again. That's why I've never bothered."

It crossed Coco's mind that, in this mood, Mamá might not argue that she didn't want to stop being Papá's wife, either. But she didn't quite dare bring this up.

"But you," Mamá went on, "can't stop being his daughter, no matter who decrees what. So he will belong to you, Coco. You choose. I will abide by your choice. What do you want to do about this, mija?"

"I don't know," Coco said.

Mamá looked like she'd expected this. She nodded, still looking out the window. "I can think of three things we might do. We might ignore it."

"What?"

"Don't sound scandalized, Coco. We knew Papá left. This isn't news. So we've seen his guitar. So his old partner sings his songs. Does it make anything different? For what it's worth, even I won't pretend to believe that your papá would have ever written that awful movie. That is purely Ernesto. But does Papá leaving behind his guitar and his music make it _worse_ that he left _us_ behind? Or is it only… proof that he…" She stopped short of saying what Coco was certain they both knew. "Proof that he shed his past completely, which we already knew, as we are the snakeskin he shed and left behind in the first place. For all we know, he's behind the scenes, letting Ernesto do all of this. For all we know, he is laughing at me… at all of it."

"Don't, Mamá. Please."

"The second thing," she continued, "is to press the studio for money. I think I could prove those were Héctor's songs, if I had to. We have the lyrics, dated before he… left. There are still some people in town who remember hearing him. Not as many as there once were, of course. But they exist. If Papá isn't there with Ernesto, then he's using the songs without permission, and we never saw a peso of money for them. We could ask for money."

"I don't want money," Coco said. _Blood money_ , she did not elaborate.

"But money may attract de la Cruz's attention," Mamá said. "Which is the third idea. That man was with Papá at least as far as Tijuana. He may know where Papá was headed, and why he decided not to tell us. Or send for us."

"Maybe he _meant_ to send for us…"

"Did his letters sound that way to you? The last ones?"

They didn't. Coco couldn't argue otherwise. She'd read them hundreds of times, trying to find clues. They were easier to read, on the typewriter, but it was like the machine had been a curtain, and it hid all the little things. She wished Papá had just written them in pen. Maybe she could have seen a tremor in his hand, or looked at little doodles along the side. Sometimes in the old letters, there would be a weird up and down kind of scrawl that Coco had later realized was his shorthand for a melody that was in his head. But he'd been enamored of the technology, and that was true enough. Coco remembered when the shoemaking tools had first come out, before Papá left, when Mamá was just trying to make Coco a new pair of shoes. Papá had played everything like a drum or a castanet, and flipped leather around to make funny noises. He would have played a typewriter like it was the piano he always said he wanted to learn.

But it had hidden him. The letters after Mexico City were all about his career, and how Tío Nesto was trying to help him. He never made little jokes to Mamá in them, and while he dutifully wrote "I love you" to Coco, he didn't call her his precious angel or make little kissing symbols on the note. He just talked about shows and auditions. The easy answer was that he'd been jealous of Tío Nesto's success and was determined to succeed for himself now. He didn't even add his poems anymore, let alone the little shorthand music scrawls.

But the ones just before those had been so full of a desire to come home! He'd talked about Christmas, and said he was writing a new song for Coco, and he'd tried to guess how much she had grown. He thought the movie auditions were _funny_ , not serious. He wanted to show Coco the silly picture he'd had taken, not to deliver it around to movie people. There was no hint of anything else. He'd had a few stomach aches ("Poor Tío Nesto had to take a meeting all by himself, which he hates, because Papá had a sad stomach again! He says I owe him one next time he has too much fun at night"), which seemed to be the extent of drama in his life, other than missing Coco and Mamá. He even said that he thought the two things were related - "I miss you both so much it seems to be making my stomach hurt!"

She didn't say anything. Mamá had read the letters at least as often as she had, and she'd known Papá longer. Maybe she saw something in them that made sense of the change.

What she said was, "I want to talk to Tío Nesto."

Mamá nodded, as if she'd expected nothing else. "Then that's what we'll do. Though it may not be easy."

It wasn't. The next three weeks were very difficult, and Mamá was on edge. Coco was nervous and frightened, but she decided to approach it like a girl detective. She studied the letters to find clues about where Papá and Tío Nesto had gone together, and she read the poems carefully for any references to what he had in mind. She went through newspaper articles about the movie to try and find out how to reach Tío Nesto, but found nothing. She asked the sisters at school how to get Ernesto de la Cruz's address, and they treated her like a little girl with a crush. Finally, Sister Elena took pity and found her a fan address. She wrote a letter, and got back a signed photograph two weeks later… with no answers. Mamá threw it out and grimaced. She spent the rest of the day muttering at the work bench while she made a pair of cowboy boots. Coco finished a plain, but perfectly well-made, pair of sandals.

"Tomorrow," Mamá said as they headed back inside, after the uncles had retired. "You will stay home from school. We will pay a visit to Señora de la Cruz."

On the one hand, she looked about as enthusiastic about this idea as she would about driving an awl through her fingertip. On the other, Coco could also feel her loosening up around the edges. She had committed herself to solving the problem of Papá at last. She was preparing herself for the truth. Coco wasn't sure how she knew this. It wasn't any one thing. But there were a lot of little things. She had taken the picture out of the trunk, for one thing. She had to fold the guitar over to put it in a pretty frame, but they were all there together, and now it was sitting on the mantel above the fireplace. A few times, Coco had awakened in the night and actually heard Mamá singing. It was quiet and sad, and once, Coco had tiptoed out to the living room, where Mamá had the picture in her hands. She was tracing Papá's face with one finger. Coco had left her alone and not asked about the song, which she hadn't recognized.

No one other than the two of them - not even the uncles - knew anything was happening. Mamá continued to run the shop with an iron hand, and Coco continued to be a good student at school. If Coco spent more of her evenings in the workshop, they seemed to accept that it was because Mamá was teaching her to make better shoes… which was true, she wasn't allowed to let her mind wander on _that_ subject, but of course, the real subject of their late night conversations was Papá. Technically, it was de la Cruz, but they both knew what they were talking about now.

Coco played sick for the uncles in the morning, and after they finished doting on her and left for the day's errands, Mamá presented her with a very nice dress. Not the sort of nice dress one went dancing in, but the sort that Mamá wore when she went to the bank to ask about a loan for new shoe leather. Coco dressed in it, and considered putting her hair up like Mamá's for the day, instead of her usual trenzas. In the end, she compromised, making one single, tight braid down her back, which pulled her hair back severely from her face, other than her bangs. She thought this made her look a good deal like Papá, even, rather unfortunately, in the nose. She thought she might never be as pretty as Mamá in the end, but for today, she thought her looks were perfect.

"All right," Mamá said when she came into the kitchen. "This is a business visit. There will be no tears, there will be no pleading."

"Of course!"

Mamá smiled faintly, and Coco could almost hear her say, _I am reminding myself, silly child._ Coco smiled back.

Together, they left the workshop, heads held high and shoulders straight. Coco felt proud to be at Mamá's side.

They reached the de la Cruz house just before lunch, and a young girl in a maid's uniform - a black dress with a frilly apron - opened the door. Mamá gave her an incredulous look. "Is the family at home?" she asked.

"Who is calling?"

"Héctor Rivera's wife and daughter," Mamá said firmly.

"Who?"

"The man who wrote all of the songs in Ernesto's new movie."

"No, ma'am," the maid said. "I'm quite sure Señor de la Cruz wrote his songs."

Coco was about to say something, but Mamá reached back and grabbed her wrist, giving it a quick but firm squeeze.

"Nevertheless, tell Señora de la Cruz who I am, and what I said."

The maid disappeared.

A moment later, Tío Nesto's mother came down from an upstairs room. She was smiling, and she held her arms out to Mamá. "Oh, Imelda," she said. "How good of you to come! I keep inviting you."

"We need to see Ernesto," Mamá said.

"About my Papá's songs," Coco added, keeping her voice as cool and level as Mamá's.

"Oh, dear, _that_ ," Señora de la Cruz said. "I'm sorry. Please come in. Have a seat." She led the way into the parlor, which was full of new furniture. She rang a little silver bell, and the maid stepped forward. "Constanza, fetch us tea and a snack, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Coco thought she caught a bit of a glare on the girl's face, but Señora de la Cruz didn't notice. "Now, Constanza told me you sounded upset. I can't say I blame you. When I visited Ernesto in the capital last month, I told him, Imelda will know those songs. You really must give Héctor credit."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, legal things," Señora de la Cruz said dismissively. "The studio wants to promote him as a great star. They own the songs now, I think, and they can treat them as they like."

"I'd like to speak to Ernesto about how the studio came by those rights," Imelda said.

"Can you reach him?" Coco asked.

"Of course I can! I am his Mamá, after all! But I don't need to right now. He is here." She leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile. "Don't tell anyone. He does not wish to advertise his presence. He's trying to talk his Papá into moving us all to the city. He says he will buy us a fine house." She shook her head. "I don't know why he started thinking of that now."

Coco sat up straighter. "May we see him, Señora?"

"Coco," Mamá said, and nodded stiffly. _Be patient,_ the nod said. _Let this ridiculous woman prattle._

"Oh, he is in the back with Jorge. They are having a conversation. Men's business, I suppose. Though I suppose _you_ might understand," she added generously, nodding at Mamá. "I always said you were halfway to being a man."

She clearly meant this to sound like a compliment, but Coco didn't think it really was one, and judging by the look on Mamá's face - like she'd just found a dead mouse in a pile of leather - neither did she.

"I'm sure they will be in soon." Señora de la Cruz rang the bell again. "Constanza, please tell the gentlemen that we have company."

Constanza looked a bit happier at this directive. She straightened her apron and puffed up her hair, then went out a back door.

"Do you plan to go to the capital?" Coco asked politely, forcing herself to be calm by sipping her tea.

"Oh, I don't know about all of that. Nesto gets wild ideas sometimes. I'm sure you remember, Imelda."

"Very well, yes."

"So full of dreams, my boy. He was always such a talented thing. How people loved him."

"And my Papá?" Coco asked.

"Yes. What a pair they were! Ah, yes, here they come!"

Indeed, there was a thunderous pounding of feet as the men came inside, stomping dirt from their shoes. Señor de la Cruz seemed to be in the middle of a serious scolding. "There will be hell to pay, Ernesto. You were always willful, and disobedient - "

"Papá, this is why I never come back. You don't understand me!"

"I understand you all too well, devil-boy, and _that_ is why you never come back!"

Señora de la Cruz looked pained. "I wish they wouldn't fight."

The parlor door swung open from the back, and Señor de la Cruz stormed in, tripping over a new footstool.

Tío Nesto caught him. "Be careful, Papá. I wouldn't want you to have an accident."

Mamá stood, squaring her shoulders. "Ernesto. I see you've had some success."

"Yes. It's been a long road from Santa Cecilia." He looked at his parents. "Mamá, Papá… if I could have a moment with Señora Rivera."

"You watch your mouth with a lady," Señor de la Cruz said, but he stomped off. Señora de la Cruz got up and scurried after him.

"Where is my father?" Coco asked.

"I have no idea," Tío Nesto said.

"You're lying. You have his songs."

"You must not spread such things around," Tío Nesto said.

"It's the truth!"

"I will speak to your mother alone. This is not a child's business."

"I'm not a child."

Tío Nesto looked at Mamá.

Mamá looked back at him, and something seemed to pass between them. "Very well. Coco… go make your manners with Señora de la Cruz."

"Mamá…"

"Coco, now."

Coco felt all of their solidarity slide away, and she turned on her heel and left the sitting room. As she closed the door, she heard Tío Nesto say, "It's 


	8. Chapter 8

8

 _1921_  
not forever!" Papá said again. His voice was low, but it wasn't quite a whisper. Mamá wasn't whispering either. They both thought that Coco was asleep by now - she had been in bed long enough to tell herself three stories and remember the words to four songs - so they were just being quiet. Both bedroom doors were open, so their voices carried perfectly. Usually, if they were talking at night, they talked in the kitchen, or even the workshop, while Mamá fixed shoes for people to make money and Papá copied out his new songs.

But not tonight. They'd been talking in the kitchen for a little while, and Coco had heard Mamá raise her voice, then she had come back to the bedroom. Papá had come back after her, and he had said, "I brought you cloth, if you want to wipe your face," and she had thanked him, and then the conversation had started again, and now Coco could hear it completely clearly.

"It _will_ be forever," Mamá said. "Oh, you may come back, but you won't… it won't be…"

"It won't be _what?_ " Papá moved somehow - Coco couldn't see them, except in her imagination - and something was shoved along the floor. A chair? The bed? She couldn't tell. "Imelda, what do I need to do for you to trust me? I don't know what I've done that you don't."

"It's not you, Héctor. It's that crazy business."

"You were in that business! You loved that business. I remember how you used to be!"

"Now, who's not trusting?"

There was a long pause, and Coco imagined Papá taking deep breaths. When he spoke, it was softer, gentler. "Imelda, please. I love you as my wife, as Coco's mamá. It's beautiful. It's even more beautiful than you as a musician. I only meant… it didn't turn you into… whatever it is you think it will turn me into."

Another pause. A lighter sound, and a creak. Mamá sitting on the bed. "The girls throw themselves at you."

"They throw themselves at Nesto." Mamá didn't say anything, but she must have given him a look because he went on. "All right, yes, they throw themselves. But I don't catch them, Imelda. Why would I? I already caught the one I wanted."

"Don't be cute."

"I'm not being cute. I'm being honest. I made you a promise, up in front of the church and God and all and sundry. I plan to keep it until I die. I'll keep it afterwards, if there's a way to do it." Another creak of springs, a bit louder. Papá had sat down beside Mamá. The anger wasn't as much now. But when Mamá spoke again, she sounded sad.

"They used to grab at me," she said. "The soldiers. Just because I was up front singing, they thought they could treat me like a fancy girl."

"Did someone hurt you?" Papá asked, his voice low and protective.

"No. Not like you're thinking. I can defend myself. And I _did_. A lot. Against grabby drunk men who'd mostly made promises in front of priests and God and everyone else. But they were away from home. And I was just a singer, so it didn't count."

"I'm not them. And that's not what you're worried about. You know I'm not like that."

"Yes," Mamá said reluctantly. "I know it, all right? But this business… look what it makes Ernesto do. He's so obsessed with fame that he tried to sign contracts for both of you without even letting us talk about it!"

"Ernesto is ambitious," Papá admitted. "And maybe I am, too, I don't know." He sighed loudly enough for Coco to hear him through the wall, and the bedsprings creaked again. There were footsteps. He must have gotten up to pace. "I want to know if I'm good enough," he said. "All right? That's my confession, Imelda. I want to know if I'm really as good as you always say I am. I want to know if the people would love my music. Is that so terrible?"

"Of course not," Mamá said, like she didn't want to say it. "But how much of the music business is about music? And how much is about going to parties and impressing the right people? And God knows _how_ they'll want you to impress them. I don't think Ernesto got that contract by proving that he's a brilliant musician, because he isn't."

"He's…"

"A talented enough _performer_. But you're the musician. And you wouldn't have gotten them. Because I don't even _know_ what they made Nesto do."

"Nothing he didn't want to."

" _What?_ "

"All right, the woman tonight, Wittington -"

"The blanca?"

"Yes. She offered to finance this little tour. To give us experience to write songs about, if I don't want them to have the real ones."

"Us?" Mamá snorted. "Since when has Ernesto written a note?"

"Well, we can also build a name for ourselves so they'll have something to work with. That's what she was going on about. Nesto told me just before the show that he was… working on it. He said she liked thought of an exotic Latin lover."

"This is the sort of person Ernesto wants to do business with? Someone who thinks we're baubles to be collected or ignored as she sees fit?"

"She's rich and spoiled, but that's all. And Ernesto… is aware enough of what she's doing. Maybe more aware than she is."

"And you weren't planning to tell me this?"

"It's Nesto she's pestering, not me. I wasn't really thinking about it."

"And if she starts 'pestering' you?"

"Then I will get on a train and come home." Another pause. "Imelda, it's not just women who don't want to be putas."

Coco did not know the last word, and had a feeling it would not be smart to ask her parents what it meant.

They didn't say anything for a long time, then Mamá said, "We need, air, Héctor. Let's go outside."

Coco sat up in bed and looked out her window. Mamá and Papá came out of the house a moment later and walked to the well. Mamá sat on the edge of it, holding the well housing. Papá sat on the ground in front of her and reached up to take her hands. Coco couldn't hear them anymore.

Mamá was in her night dress, but Papá was still in his white charro suit, the one he'd worn for the show with Tío Nesto earlier tonight, for the end of the Carpa festival. The little man in glasses, who they said was called "Señor Esquivel" was sitting with Mamá and Coco before the show, and he kept going on about how good the show was, and how he was going to turn Papá and Tío Nesto into stars. Coco tried to imagine him pasting them up into the sky, and she didn't like the idea. It sounded very far away. Mamá hadn't spoken much. Tío Nesto had made an agreement with Señor Esquivel to do a lot of shows, and then _after_ the trip, he would make them stars.

There was also a lady with yellow hair who had a very funny way of talking. Mr. Esquivel spent a lot of time saying things with her that Coco didn't follow, and she laughed a lot. She wore a very short dress with sparkly fringes, and had a lot of make up on. Coco had been introduced, but she couldn't make her mouth say the lady's name, even though the lady kept trying to make her say it right. "Wittington… no, no, like if you said 'Juan'.. .can say 'Juan'? So 'Ju-eett…' Oh, there's no -ng in Spanish, is there? Well, there is, I suppose, but it doesn't sound the same, it never comes before a 't'…" Finally, Mamá had rattled off something that Coco didn't understand, and the lady had said, "Oh, I didn't realize you spoke English, Señora."

"Really?" Mamá asked. She was smiling, but Coco didn't think she was happy. "I assumed you knew, since you and Señor Esquivel were speaking it in front of me and I didn't ask you to translate."

The yellow-haired lady blinked and smiled in a kind of frozen face way that Coco didn't understand. Then the show had begun. It was more serious than the afternoon show, just music instead of funny skits. Papá had written a special song just for the beginning of Lent. The lady didn't seem to like it, but everyone else did. It was soft and low and pretty and sad. Then Papá and Tío Nesto sang a duet about the men who never came home from the war, and Tío Nesto sang one alone that was about a man who did come home, but found out that his village had burned. There were people crying during this. Papá brought the mood back up with a pretty song about birds and children and laughing and sunshine. The lady passed a piece of paper to Señor Esquivel that looked like she was practicing her alphabet on it, like Coco sometimes did. There were about ten S's, all of them with lines going down through them, and a few exclamation points. Señor Esquivel looked at it with approval. Maybe he was teaching her to read.

When the show was over, everyone went back to the make-up tent. Coco loved the smell of the make-up tent, and liked to fuss in front of the mirrors and pretend that she was pretty like Mamá, and everyone had come for her. Tonight, she had sat on Papá's lap and played with lipstick while everyone talked. Some of the talk was in the language Mamá called English, but most was normal. Coco still didn't understand it. Tío Nesto had signed something and it was about songs. Papá said he didn't have enough songs to go along with it. There were words in English then, and Papá, usually the softest of people, sounded angry, though Coco didn't know what all of it was about. Tío Nesto laughed and said, back in Spanish now, that Papá was being modest, and he had a million songs in his head. "And I've already signed!"

"You don't sign for Héctor," Mamá said.

"No, of course not, but we are a duo. And this is our chance. They want me on stage, of course, but… we must have Héctor's songs. No one else sings them. They will set us apart from the rest."

"They aren't yours to sell," Mamá told him. "We do not agree to this."

Señor Esquivel smirked at Papá, then laughed and said, "Ah, we know who wears the trousers in your family, don't we?" Coco knew that something was very wrong, though she didn't know what; she had only seen Mamá in trousers a few times, working around the house, but she couldn't think what was wrong with it. But her parents had fallen as silent as a cloud, and Tío Nesto was wrinkling his nose. The only one who didn't seem to be bothered was the yellow-haired lady, who had laughed merrily until she realized she was breaking the silence.

Coco had felt Papá tense, but it was nothing next to the way Mamá's face turned bright, furious red. "If you…"

Papá reached across and took her hand. "He was joking, Imelda. Poorly." He looked at Señor Esquivel. "My wife is a brilliant woman, whose insights I trust in all things. And she is very much a lady." He stared, unsmiling, at Señor Esquivel, who finally backed down.

"My apologies, Doña Rivera," he muttered.

They went back to talking in complicated words that Coco didn't understand. Papá kept saying that he needed to think. Tío Nesto made a few jokes like, "Héctor has to think for a week before he decides which socks to wear." But it was late, and the sky was getting dark, and Coco was warm in Papá's arms, and before anything was decided, she started to go to sleep. Papá had said that it was time to take her home.

"Surely, your wife can do that," the yellow-haired lady said.

Coco yawned. "Papá sings to me."

"Oh, how precious!" The lady reached out and pinched the tip of Coco's nose. "You are an adorable little thing! But surely, you wouldn't mind your mother singing to you!"

" _Papá_ sings to me," Coco said again.

"We're through tonight, anyway," Papá said. "My wife and I need to talk about this, and give it thought. It's a very good opportunity, and I'm grateful for it, but it's a big decision."

"It's _your_ decision," Tío Nesto said, leaning close while Mamá got their things from the costume area, and the other two talked quietly. "Dammit, Héctor, this is _it_. I know it doesn't come naturally to you, but _try_ to be a man for once."

Papá tightened his arms around Coco and said, "I have been a man for more than four years now. You should try it."

And with that, he had turned around, and they had found Mamá getting their blanket to wrap around Coco.

Tío Nesto had left with Señor Esquivel and the lady. Mamá and Papá had walked home, passing Coco back and forth between them as their arms tired, but neither of them had sung. Mamá had started to say something about not going, but Papá had cut her off, saying, "Imelda, we have to think about this." Mamá, furious, had walked on ahead of them, and was already turning down Coco's bed when they got inside. Papá hadn't even sung Coco's song before tucking her in, but she didn't dare go ask for it, not when they were angry.

Coco didn't know how long ago it had been. She was completely awake now, like she always was when there was anger in the house. There was a clock in the living room, but she couldn't see it, and couldn't tell time very well, anyway. She'd heard the little bird come out and make its cheerful sound three times, and the sky was very dark, aside from the full moon, which was clear and close, shedding a silver light over Mamá and Papá at the well.

They held one another's hands very tightly, and Mamá kept shaking her head, making a twisted up face like she might cry, even though she was Mamá. Papá kept talking, and finally laid his head on her knee. She let go of his hands and stroked his hair, but they both looked miserable.

Mamá looked up, and she must have seen Coco in the window, because she stopped stroking Papá's hair and said something. He looked up.

He stood and offered his hand to Mamá. She took it, then he just swept her up and carried her inside. It wasn't a happy thing, like it usually was when he picked her up. It was more like she was too tired to walk.

Coco slid down from the bed and went to her door. She opened it just as Mamá and Papá came in. Papá set Mamá down on her soft purple chair and kissed her cheeks softly, then found a smile somewhere in his face and gave it to Coco.

"Did we wake you up, querida?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He nodded, like he'd expected it. "Come on," he said. "Will you feel better if we sing your song?"

"Yes."

"All right, then." He picked her up and carried her back to her room, setting her down on the bed, then went out quickly and got his guitar. There was a little oil lamp on Coco's play table, and he lit it, filling the room with a soft, reddish glow. He started to play. The guitar was soft and Papá's voice was sad, but every word seemed to wrap Coco up in a warm blanket. She could feel her sleepiness coming back by the time she joined him at the end of the song. She put her hands on his face and leaned up against him so she could smell his good, solid Papá smell - a mix of sweat and stage make-up and smoke from the audience's cigars and other things she couldn't name, things that made her feel safe and loved.

He set down the guitar when he finished singing and picked her up, cuddling her very close. She opened her eyes and looked over his shoulder. Mamá was standing in the door with tears running down her face. She turned and left.

"Mamá is sad?" Coco asked.

Papá nodded. "And we will take special care to make her not sad, won't we? I may be away for a little while soon -"

"No!"

"Yes, Coco. Maybe not, but Tío Nesto got us a good job. Good jobs aren't easy to find. When I'm gone, you'll be good for Mamá, won't you? She's a precious gift. Promise you'll be good to her, and love her so very much?"

"I promise."

"Good." He put her down and pulled her sheets back up. "I'm sorry I didn't sing to you earlier. Are you all right, angelita?"

"Yes, Papá."

He kissed her forehead, then tucked her in tightly. He stayed by the lamp longer than he usually did, just looking at Coco, then he lowered the wick and plunged Coco's room into the dark.

She heard her parents speaking again, being soft and kind with one another, and finally, she fell asleep.

In her dreams, she heard her father playing, and her mother singing. Her feet danced in the clouds, and for the moment, all was well.

In the morning, Papá and Mamá were especially nice to each other and to her, and they counted blessings together for a long time. But Mamá still looked sad and tired, and Papá was working very hard to make her happy.

Coco kept talking and singing and dancing, trying to make everything like her dream, but it was 


	9. Chapter 9

9

 _1931_  
not anything you want to hear," Ernesto said.

"Isn't it?" Imelda sat down, watching the door warily until it clicked shut, and she heard Coco's footsteps receding down the hall. "Here is what I see: You are making a great deal of money singing songs my husband wrote, which he never intended for public consumption. The opening song is my daughter's lullaby, which you've turned into a cheap cantina number about girls in flouncing skirts. I've seen you take credit for those songs."

He made a dismissive gesture with one hand. "Ah, Imelda. I would have given him credit, of course, but the movie studio… they own the songs now, and they want to promote me as a musician. They are… quite strict about it. I wouldn't recommend challenging them, or spreading around the idea that, well, perhaps Héctor was the original source of the song."

"You wouldn't recommend…"

"Oh, they are, as I said, devoted to a particular view. I wouldn't want to see them press a lawsuit against you for slander. You have a business now, as I understand it."

"If they sued me, it would still come out that I said it. Héctor's friends would remember."

"What friends? You and I, Imelda. We're the only ones left who knew those songs. Ceci, bless her soul, is not in a speaking position."

"Coco knows them."

"Yes, and of course, they will take the word of a child who was four years old the last time she heard the song. I thought about answering her letter with a lawyer's note, but I decided to come back and be more reasonable instead. I would have come to you tomorrow had you not come today. The songs are no longer Héctor's. And be fair, the new arrangements that the studio musicians have done are significant."

"So, the butchers cut up the carcass you gave them and shredded it into small pieces, so now they own it?"

"If it was sold to them first… use your own metaphor. You have a business. Do your shoes still belong to the rancheros who owned the cows?" He sighed, as if taking the burden of the world onto himself. "And Imelda, do you really wish to risk everything for Héctor at this late date? Or force me to tell you - and the child - how I came by the rights?"

Imelda wove her fingers together, pressing them tightly enough to cause pain, which canceled out a small wave of fear. "Héctor would not have given you the rights. Or that guitar. Do you want to tell me what in the name of God you're doing with Héctor's guitar, saying you fished it out of a rubbish pile and restored it? I made that guitar. As a wedding present."

"Don't force me to hurt you, Imelda. Go home. Make up a story for yourself. Say that Héctor is dead. Tell yourself he died on the road and I didn't tell you for some reason, and I stole his guitar and his songs. Don't tell it to anyone else, or I will sue you myself, but tell it to yourself. It's better for you than the truth, and no one will argue with a wife remembering her husband well." He shook his head. " _I_ want you to remember Héctor well. He was my best friend. Of course I want him remembered well."

"I don't think you give a damn how he's remembered. Where is he?"

"The last I saw of him, he was on a train going north."

"I know you were with him as far as Tijuana. There's only one place to go north from there. He crossed the border."

"Yes. He sold me his song book for train passage to New York City. They wouldn't want Spanish songs there, anyway. He'd been writing in English."

"Héctor barely _spoke_ English. I translated for him sometimes."

Again, Ernesto affected an expression of deep pain. "Imelda, Héctor was… learning English. Studying it… intensely."

Imelda recognized his innuendo. He wasn't subtle. "That," she said, "is a lie. That woman was pestering _you_ , not Héctor, and he promised that he would go home if she started."

"And he may have meant it when he said it."

"There was nothing in the letters, not even about learning English!"

"Well, he wasn't going to tell you, was he?" Ernesto shook his head in disbelief. "I watched him write those letters. He laughed, trying to figure out how to explain all the time we were away. I told him to blame it on me, if he had to. He was my friend. It wasn't the first time I'd covered for him."

"No."

"Imelda, please, don't make me tell you more."

"Oh, go ahead, Ernesto. Finish your lie. I'm sure you have it well-rehearsed. I wouldn't want to deny you the performance."

"It's not a performance. I wish it were. I should not… Héctor is my friend… but what he did to you…" He wiped his hands over his face, and kept his eyes closed. "He would have told you anything to get you to let him out of that door. He was twenty! You'd had him cooped up since he was sixteen."

"He… he loved Coco."

"Oh, yes, of course. And you, I'm sure, in his way." He opened his eyes and leaned forward, taking her hands. "But Imelda, men have needs. Women don't really understand them, even women like you."

"What does that mean?"

"Mannish women. I'm sorry, but it's true, you know it is. You are a woman who wishes so badly to be a man that she takes over legal dealings and finances that really are a man's domain. You'd already started that shoe business of yours before Héctor even left! How do you think it made a man feel to see his wife providing for the family. What was he meant to do? Be a nursemaid?"

Imelda felt as though she had been slapped repeatedly. "I… Héctor was the head of our house. He knew that…"

" _How_ would he know that? You inserted yourself into conversations that weren't your business, and you scooped up all of the money-"

" _I_ did? You took home three quarters of the money for Héctor's songs!"

"And you made it your business to remind him of that! To remind him that you thought he was second rate!" He patted her hands. "Oh, I know you didn't mean it that way. You can't help who and what you are. But I believe Héctor was halfway to being a woman by the time he finally got away. Annie Wittington… she was a woman. She let him be a man with her."

"It's a lie," Imelda said, but her voice sounded soft to her, almost shaky. "It's a damnable lie. I'll find that woman, and I'll ask her."

"You'll have to wait for the Day of the Dead," Ernesto said. "I had news a few years back. Annie was taking opium and seems to have taken too much of it."

"Very convenient. So he sold the songs to pay for passage to New York. For what? For this woman?"

"No." He shook his head. "Imelda, please, just let it go. He went to New York for auditions. He probably changed his name to something Anglo; they don't like Spanish names up there. He was thinking about 'Hank Rivers,' if you really want to go searching. Don't ask any more."

"No, you brought this woman up. She was with him?"

"Not when he left. There had been a parting of the ways. I…" He looked down. "That was how I got the guitar. He needed the money badly, and I had always wanted it. It is a beautiful instrument. So I bought it from him."

"What _are_ you talking about?"

"He'd been trapped once. He wasn't about to be trapped again."

This time, the sense of being struck wasn't just in Imelda's mind. It was so strong she actually reeled backward on her chair. "That… is…"

"A lie? Again?" He shook his head. "I wish it were. He was a mess for a while. He was finally getting things back together in Tijuana. I hope he didn't fall in with another bad crowd up north."

"He would never… not just sell the guitar… he wouldn't…"

Ernesto stood up, his hands clasped behind his back, and sighed deeply. "I wish you hadn't pushed me into telling you that. I wish you could have gone on believing… Héctor was a great performer, Imelda. You know that. And he tried very hard to play the part you cast him in."

"That was not a performance…"

"I knew him longer than you did. I knew him on the road. Men are… more real in one another's company. I'm sorry to have to tell you that, but it's the truth. We all perform for women. And I think he really did want to make you happy, if that helps at all."

 _Stop it,_ Imelda tried to say, but the words stuck in her throat.

"But Héctor… he was put on this earth to do two things: Write his songs, and play his guitar. You tried to stop him from doing either. He couldn't keep up his pretense any longer."

Imelda swallowed and tried to control her voice. She made a reasonably good job of it. "So, he left me for auditions, and because I am too mannish, and because it was all a fake, and because I got in the way of his musical career. And because of this woman, and he sold you his guitar to pay for… to take care of a problem. Which is it, Ernesto? Which lie do you want me to believe?"

"Why would I lie to you?"

"To keep me from screaming from the rooftops that you stole Héctor's songs!"

"You don't want to do that, Imelda. Your little business is successful enough for Santa Cecilia, but you stand no chance against the studio's lawyers." He held up a hand. "It would not be my choice. I am as owned by the studio as the songs are."

"They weren't yours to sell."

"I have a contract with Héctor. I can show it to you. The guitar was a private sale for private reasons, but I needed clear ownership of the songs. I had a lawyer draw it up, and we both signed it."

"With witnesses?" Imelda asked, her mind struggling to make sense of it. "Witnesses who saw both of you sign?"

"It wouldn't be legal otherwise, would it?"

"I'll want to see it."

"I'll have it sent to your shop."

"And talk to the witnesses."

"Again, it will have to wait for the Day of the Dead. Annie was one of them. The other was a tavern keeper who went to war."

"Wonderful."

"We've had violent times." He went to a roll-top desk and pulled out a thin folder, then sat back down, leaning forward. "When I got Coco's letter, I made a search for everything I could find. I thought you might want to know what I know. It's not much. You can see here, the hotel he stayed in at Tijuana. The receipts. Bar tab." He pushed a few bits of paper at Imelda, and she took them, almost in self-defense. "I even talked to friends I have who work at the border. They have him crossing the day before Christmas. He had an old guitar, a suitcase, and his publicity photo."

"He would have had a picture of Coco, or her drawing."

"But he didn't." He shook his head sadly. "Think about that, Imelda, when you try to judge what I've told you. He didn't have _her_ picture, or yours. Only his own. Is that the man you thought you knew?"

"It doesn't mean the other things… the guitar… I won't believe that."

He nodded. "I think it's well that you don't. Let us both say I made that up for some nefarious reason of my own. Your life will be better if you believe that. It's better to remember him well, for all the good he tried to do."

"You are such a liar…"

Ernesto stood up. "I have tried to be gentle with you, out of respect to my friend. But I will not continue to take these accusations. You want to know what else he sold me?" He reached into his pocket and flung something small and shiny.

There was no way Imelda could have seen it, not really, before it rolled under the couch, but she knew what it was.

Héctor's wedding ring.

She didn't go after it.

She stood up as slowly as she could, straightening her shoulders, refusing to bend her head. "You will never speak to me or to my family again. And your mother can get her shoes repaired somewhere else."

"I'll gladly oblige, but you - and your family - will keep your silence."

"Or what? Another threat of a lawsuit?"

"Or I'll tell everyone in earshot why your husband couldn't stand the sight of you. Does your bastard daughter really want to know that her papá was a prisoner in his own home?"

Imelda took a step toward him. "If you ever come near my daughter, for any reason whatsoever, you'd best learn to sing soprano."

With that, Imelda turned on her heel and opened the door. She could see Coco in the garden with Ernesto's parents, making pained conversation. God, but she looked like Héctor with her hair like this.

Imelda took her by the elbow and pulled her up. "We're going."

Coco tried to put her teacup down, but missed the edge of the table, letting it shatter on the cobblestones.

"Clumsy girl!" Señora de la Cruz said. "That's my good - "

But Imelda didn't bother staying. She would send over a new teacup. She didn't want to be in their debt.

"Mamá!" Coco said. "Mamá, what is it? Did Tío Nesto -"

"Señor de la Cruz will not be talking further to us." Imelda steered her out onto the street, not paying attention to where she was going. "Not today and not ever. He is full of lies, and I don't know if there was any truth buried in them, or what it might be if there was. Performers are always full of lies. I should have remembered. They all lie. And if you ever call him 'Tío' again, I will wash your mouth with soap."

"Where is Papá? Why didn't he… what did he say?"

"Nothing we didn't already know. At least nothing that counts." She pushed blindly through an alley, somewhere around the plaza now. She could hear the guitars, and she wanted them to stop. "Coco, you promise me that you won't try to contact him ever again. Promise!"

"Promise!" Coco squeaked. "Mamá, stop. You're hurting my arm."

Imelda stopped and took a big, gulping breath. "I'm sorry, mija. I'm not a good mamá today, am I?

Coco squeezed her hand. "Mamá, what did he say?"

"He told a lot of dirty-minded lies." She took out the papers, which were still crumpled in her hand. "But this is true enough. He crossed the border. Here's the record. Whatever became of him, it became of him in a foreign place, far from us. Because of his damned ambition. The damned guitar."

"Why does Tí… why does de la Cruz have it?"

"I don't believe any of his whys," Imelda said, starting to walk again, mostly because she couldn't stay still without hearing the lies bouncing around in her skull, trying to be true. "But the how seems to be… to be that Papá sold it to him. To pay passage. Along with the songs. I can ignore everything else. Just Ernesto being a bastard. But I can't ignore that."

She nearly ran into the back of a mariachi who was belting out La Llorona (very badly), and she swerved into a crowd of waiting musicians.

"Out of the way," she said.

"Hey, beautiful," one of them said. "You're crabby today."

"I think she's hungry," another one said. "I got a chorizo for you…" He started to reach for his nether regions, but she grabbed his hand and pinned him against the wall of a building. He was too surprised to fight.

"If you don't want to be playing your guitar with broken fingers, I suggest you move along," she said. "As soon as you apologize to my daughter."

"Mamá, it's all right…"

"I'm sorry," he muttered. "My mistake."

"Yes, it was," Imelda said.

She lowered her head and charged through the square, meeting no one's glances. She could hear Coco behind her.

This had been a disaster, as she should have known it would be. It was time for them to put the past away for good.

She blasted through the workshop, ignoring a yowl from the stray cat she surprised out of sleep, and pushed into the living room. Coco was still behind her, straightening something that had fallen over.

Imelda went to the mantel and took down the picture of the family, of Héctor with his crooked smile. The guitar was already hidden. Imelda couldn't stand the sight of it. But it was time to get rid of the rest. This wasn't her family anymore.

She threw it to the floor and the glass shattered. Her own face was obscured by spidery cracks. Coco seemed to be reaching out to touch them. Héctor was untouched by it.

She reached down and picked it up, and black fury rushed through her. She tore it, ripping his head from his shoulders, and let the curled bit fly off. She was reaching for the other side when Coco rushed in and ripped it from her hands, somehow managing not to tear it. "Mamá!" she screamed. "Mamá, why 


	10. Chapter 10

10

 _1922_  
don't _we_ go to the cemetery?" Coco asked, stepping carefully over the marigolds. "Everyone is there!"

"We don't have anyone there, querida," Imelda said. "Our people are still alive."

"What does 'alive' mean?"

"It means that you're here. That you're breathing and talking and thinking and loving people."

"Is Papá alive? He's not here."

Imelda felt her throat tighten. It had been six months since the last letter. Almost a year since the last one that actually said anything. He had been gone for seventeen months now, and that wasn't counting the three months they'd spent arguing before Ernesto had finally won his allegiance. She'd tried everything she could think of. She'd even tried for another baby. The first had happened so naturally and accidentally, but this time, even though she suspected Héctor was trying as well (it would have taken the choice out of his hands), it had just not happened. In the end, he'd walked off into a rare gray morning, his guitar slung over his back, and Imelda had thrown something after him. She didn't remember what.

The thought had crossed her mind from time to time that… that something had happened… but… "Tío Nesto would have told us if something happened to Papá," she said. "He is simply… he left us."

"Why?"

"To play his little songs for people. I don't want to talk about this, Coco."

She nodded, but frowned as they came around the corner near the baker's stall. He was doing a brisk business in pan de muerto, of course. To be left on graves, or ofrendas.

"Marisol says that people who've left us come back on Día de los Muertos," Coco said tentatively.

"That would be a miracle, indeed. I would not count on it." They reached the booth, and Imelda picked out everyday bread, and a little cake for dessert. "Who is Marisol?"

"From _school_ ," Coco said proudly. "She is my friend. She's better at numbers than I am, but I'm better at words."

"Are you?"

Coco nodded. "I know _all_ my letters, and I can rhyme words like Papá!" She paled. "I mean… I sometimes make rhymes."

Imelda sighed and paid the baker, who was looking at them with sympathy. She steered Coco further down the road. "There is no reason to be ashamed of where you got that from. You got what was good."

Her frown deepened. "Papá was good. I want Papá. I want my song."

"I'll sing it for you later."

"I want _Papá_ to sing it for me." She stuck out her lower lip, then it trembled and she started to cry. "I want Papá! I want Papá, where is my papá…?"

It wasn't the first time anger had swept over Imelda since Héctor's disappearance, but it was the first time it was wound through with utterly black hatred. Coco had always been his child more than hers, even when she was still nursing. Mamá was a source of food. Papá was the center of her world. And he had _left_ her. Imelda could handle the idea that she herself had been abandoned - she didn't like it, but she supposed Héctor had no responsibility to her, and she had made her own mistakes along the way. But the fact that he'd left _Coco_ , the person he'd pretended to love most in the world…

The wave of hatred broke over her, and she let it drown her for a minute while she kissed and cuddled her grieving daughter. Like the waves of anger, it eventually receded. She took a deep breath. "Coco," she said, "we will be strong. We will keep our heads up."

Still sniffling, Coco said, "Marisol says, if you make an ofrenda for someone who left…"

"Ofrendas are for the dead, not the living," Imelda said.

"We could try."

Imelda wasn't sure what she believed about death or the afterlife. It had never mattered to her much, one way or the other. But the one thing she was certain of was that no one actually _saw_ their returned loved ones, or was sung to by them. It would only invite more disappointment, even if…

If…

 _No,_ she told herself. _People do not just die and then disappear on concert tours, at least not without a note in the newspaper or some kind of rumor at least. People were watching him. He was with his best friend, however much of a snake that friend was. Even a snake would have mentioned to someone that his friend was dead. Therefore, Héctor is alive, so even if the dead could visit, he would not. Because he is on a stage somewhere, being a clown and basking in applause, like he always loved best._

For a moment, she imagined Coco sitting up beside some makeshift ofrenda all night, waiting for her beloved Papá to magically appear for her, and crying herself to sleep when he didn't. The furious, helpless hate and anger broke over her again.

She shook her head. "No. No, Coco. We will not pretend anything other than the truth: Papá left us for his career. I'm sorry, and I wish he hadn't. But he did. We need to accept it."

Coco looked down at her feet and nodded, and Imelda cursed herself along with Héctor. What parents they had turned out to be! He'd decided to spend her childhood on the road and she was deliberately making deep scars here.

She put her free hand gently on Coco's face. "I'm sorry, querida. I'm so very sorry for everything."

Coco took both of her hands and put them on the sides of Imelda's face, leaning in reverently. It took Imelda a moment to recognize the gesture as the one she had always given to Héctor when he finished their song.

"I love you, Mamá," she said.

Imelda set down her bread and cake and put her arms around her daughter, picking her up and holding her tightly. "I love you, too, mijita. We'll be all right. You'll see. We'll be all right."

Coco nodded against her neck. Imelda let her go a little bit, and leaned back far enough to kiss her forehead.

"Shall we bring our bread home and have supper with Tío Oscar and Tío Felipe? Tío Oscar is making tlayudas."

Coco found a smile, although she was still sniffling, and nodded.

"Will you be a big girl and carry the bread?"

"Yes, Mamá." She bent down and picked up the bread.

Imelda steered her the rest of the way home.

Oscar was busy in the kitchen, making a grand mess as he always did. Felipe was in the little workshop, setting a nice block heel on a boot. Coco went over to him and watched carefully.

"Do you want to learn?" he asked. "Are you ready to be a shoemaker like your mamá?"

"She's a bit young," Imelda said, sitting down at her own station.

Coco sat down on the floor beside her, leaning comfortably against her skirts. "I'll learn," she said. "I'll make myself pretty shoes with flowers on them."

"Flowers!" Imelda repeated. "I could make you a pair with flowers, if you want."

"Can I make the flower part?"

"Leather is too hard for your hands." Imelda set down the awl she'd picked up. "Why don't we start you with cloth? Eh? It won't be fancy shoes, but maybe some slippers for the house. You can make the upper into anything you want, and I'll put a sole on it for you."

"Really?"

"Yes. It won't be easy. But you're a clever girl, and you can do it."

"What do you say? Are you clever like your mamá?" Felipe asked, then looked up. "What do you think Mamá Imelda? Little Mary Janes?"

"The strap will be too hard. Flats. Go on, mija. Go get your lasts."

This got a genuine smile. Imelda had made new lasts for Coco just last week, casting her feet in plaster, which always made her happy. (In fact, Imelda usually made two sets, so Coco could play with one.) She supposed she could use the size three standard at the moment - she was developing quite the collection of sizes now, all in much better condition than the set that had been left behind with the house - but it pleased her to make shoes for Coco that were specifically for her feet, with every quirk accounted for. Coco rushed out to her room to get her lasts.

"You know we'll end up making most of them," Felipe said.

"No. I'll guide her. It will amuse her."

"Do you have time to walk her through making shoes at five?"

"I'll do some of my own work after she's in bed. And she's six, Felipe. Remember, we had a party?"

"More like a funeral," he muttered.

Imelda ground her teeth, trying not to let the anger and hate back in. Coco's fifth birthday had occasioned a letter from Héctor. It had contained a side note apologizing and begging forgiveness, because Ernesto had extended the tour again, but it was contact nonetheless. He'd written her another little song, and Imelda had broken out her own guitar to play it and sing it for her, though she had privately been fuming that Ernesto couldn't even give Héctor three days to come home for his daughter's birthday.

Her sixth birthday, however, had been a different matter. She had waited every day for the mail to come and each time it failed to bring a letter, she had cried. Imelda and the twins had done their solid best to make a good birthday. Imelda had even tried to write a song herself, thinking maybe she could pass it off as Héctor's, but she hadn't been able to do it. It was much harder than it had looked from the outside. Coco had spent the actual day sitting at the window, as if she expected Héctor to come walking up the path like nothing had happened. Of course, he didn't. And even having every little girl in Santa Cecilia over to play with a piñata and eat real ice cream had done nothing to cheer her up.

Felipe stabbed his awl at the leather he was working. "I will kill Héctor myself if he ever does show his face," he said. "If I can do it before Oscar gets to it, anyway."

"I've earned the first blow," Imelda reminded him. "And I won't take it because Coco would not forgive me, let alone you and Oscar, so put it out of your head."

"Then what _would_ you do?"

"I don't know. He'd be sleeping elsewhere, at any rate." She looked down at a freshly papered last and tried to decide what pattern to make next. "I doubt we'll ever know what we'd do. I think he's gone off to find… how did he put it? Who he's meant to be." She bit her lip. "Coco wanted to put him up on an ofrenda."

"Hmm."

"Even if he were dead, it might be better for her to forget him. He left."

"Hmm."

"Will you say something else?"

"What should I say? When have we ever put up an ofrenda? Who would we put on it? Our parents? Do you remember them?"

"No."

"No. And we are fine. We have you. So does Coco."

 _And who do_ I _have?_ Imelda wondered, but didn't say. She had always been a substitute mother to the twins, now she was a true mother to Coco. The only person she had ever leaned on was Héctor. Now that he was gone, it was either stand up alone or fall.

It hadn't been easy to learn to stand. She had already decided never to fall back on leaning again.

Coco returned with her lasts, dancing them across the table in a quick little cha-cha. Imelda rolled her eyes, then pulled Coco up beside her on the workbench and started showing her how to make a pattern. Partway through the process, Coco became entirely distracted with the making of cloth flowers. It should have been the very last point of the exercise, but Oscar came in from the kitchen to find out what was going on, and got her going on the silly things, which delighted her to no end. As much as Imelda wanted to start teaching her daughter basic tricks of shoemaking, she preferred a delighted Coco to a merely distracted one, so she let it go on until Coco had made several little cloth marigolds.

"Will cloth ones make a trail, too?" she asked.

Imelda bit her tongue, then said, "They would if we had an ofrenda. At least as much as we can believe the real ones make a trail."

"You don't believe?"

"I don't know, mija."

She frowned, but there was no time for a conversation, because Oscar had finished supper, and they all went in to eat. Felipe brought out the week's newspaper, which had come in the mail, and read out the best stories. Coco loved stories where there were princesses, so Felipe found whatever he could from abroad. Imelda wanted to know about the economy (Felipe pretended to fall asleep while he was reading these). Felipe himself had to know about horse races. And Oscar always begged for the bizarre.

"Someday," Felipe said, "there will be nothing bizarre in the entire newspaper."

"They go out of their way for it. Go on. Find us something."

"Let's see… de la Huerta treaty, more taxes…"

"Depressing, not bizarre," Oscar said.

"The Great Tree of Tule is starting to show its age."

"At eight hundred, that's expected."

"There's that kidnapping of the land redistribution man…"

"Politics. Does anyone want politics?" No one did. Oscar waved his hand in a "go on" gesture. Felipe continued to scan. "Communist rallies… no. We live as primal savages according to Yankees."

"What?" Imelda asked.

"I only read it. From San Francisco."

"They don't like us so much they should stop using our language for their cities," Oscar said.

Felipe went on. "Typhoid, no, more taxes, no. Rebels. No. Ah, here. Mummies."

"Mummies?" Imelda repeated.

"Remember that train car they lost on the way to Juarez? No one knew where it came unattached? They found it. A year later. Someone was hitching a ride in it. The desert wasn't kind."

Imelda wrinkled her nose. "Save that for when Coco and I aren't here."

"All right, all right. Back to the tree?"

And so he went back and read the article about the eight hundred year old tree, and Coco worried that it would fall down soon, and later on, they sat around the fire and talked about their childhood (omitting Héctor as much as possible), which was more or less their only tradition around Día de los Muertos. Imelda told the story she remembered of her nanny, and Coco asked what a nanny was ("Someone who is hired when a mother is too busy to take care of her children," Imelda explained, to Coco's horror). They speculated a bit about who their parents were, but the question didn't seem pressing anymore. Coco finally fell asleep on Oscar's lap, and Imelda put her to bed. The cloth marigolds fell out of one of her pockets. Imelda scooped them up without thinking about it.

Out the window, she could see Oscar and Felipe in the frames of the little cabins they were building. The plan was to eventually connect everything around, putting the well in an enclosed courtyard. The twins liked sleeping in the unfinished frames, under tents, for some reason. Men. They were always boys somewhere inside.

 _But you took Héctor's boyhood. You forced him out of it. Of course he left you to have fun in his way. Of course…_

She silenced the nagging voice in her head, which had belonged to more than one person in Santa Cecilia over the last six years. With other girls, they assumed that the boy had been responsible for a ruination (though of course, "she should have known better" was a refrain). With Héctor? That had been Imelda's fault. The worst part was, she couldn't really argue. She'd always felt like she was the one doing the taking. She'd come across one of God's little miracles, and she'd taken and kept him for herself.

And of course, she had lost him.

 _No. He was with you of his own free will, and he left the same way. God and miracles and even you have nothing to with it._

She looked down at the cloth marigolds in her hand, and, on a whim, dropped them in a line toward the bed, toward the little nightstand where she kept the picture of her family. She could put up a candle. Maybe put out some of his songs. Maybe a few of her hair ribbons, which he'd so loved to unwind. She could play for him and sing, an offering. Coco wouldn't have to know if he didn't come.

She reached into the little drawer and pulled out a candle, lighting it from her oil lamp, and set it down in a holder beside the frame. Then she took Héctor's last charro suit out of the closet, holding it up to her nose and wishing for a scent that wasn't there. What else? His letters? One of the poems?

From the next room, she heard Coco begin to cry again.

Furiously, she blew out the candle and shoved it back into the drawer. There was an old trunk at the foot of the bed, and she opened it. She pulled all of Héctor's remaining clothes from the closet and threw them inside, finishing it off with the charro jacket.

Then, with a decisive move, she put the family portrait in there as well.

She slammed it shut and pushed it away.

Then she went to Coco's room to comfort her from whatever nightmare had woken her up.

Coco was shivering in her bed, looking out at the moonlit courtyard. She looked up with a start when Imelda came in. "Mamá…"

"It's alright, Coco."

"There was a monster, and he burned up Papá."

"Here, let me light your lamp," Imelda said, going over and igniting the wick. "There, you see. No monsters."

"He was going to eat up my head."

"There are no monsters, Coco." She sat down on Coco's bed and put a cool hand on her forehead. "You're safe."

"Could I have a song?"

"Coco…"

"Please, Mamá."

Imelda tried to start Héctor's lullaby, but it wouldn't come out of her throat. Instead, she managed a verse of Arroro, mi niña, cuddling Coco tightly and brushing her hair with aching fingers. Her voice was weak and out of practice, but Coco responded to it, putting one small hand on Imelda's throat, as if to feel the sound. She tried to feel Héctor somewhere nearby, tried to convince herself that there was a miracle, but he wasn't there. She couldn't feel him anywhere.

When she finished, she kissed Coco's head and rocked her until she fell asleep again.

Oscar had come back into the house while she was singing, and he was looking at her with great concern. "What's happening, Imelda? I heard you singing."

"Just a lullaby."

"You haven't sung for a long time."

"No. I should not. It hurts." She looked out the window. There was a vague sound of the party in the square, and up the hill toward the church, she could see the candlelight from the cemetery, where people were still coming and going. "I just don't understand why 


	11. Chapter 11

11

 _1931_  
are you doing this?" Coco screamed. "Mamá! Stop!"

Imelda looked down. There was something red on Coco's blouse. Something… She shook her head. "Coco. You're bleeding."

Coco looked down at her hands, and now Imelda could see that she was crawling through broken glass. Her hands were cut. Her knees were bleeding. Some of the blood had dripped onto the blouse. She looked dazed, and confused at the sight of it. "Mamá, please stop," she said. "Please, Mamá. Don't do this. Not again."

Imelda looked down at the broken frame, at the photo Coco was clutching so desperately. "He left us," she said.

"Yes. Mamá, please. What did de la Cruz tell you? Why… why are you…?" She gestured helplessly at the wreckage. "You said it was lies. Why do you care what lies he told?"

"Lies," Imelda repeated. She wiped her hand over her eyes. The mariachi from the square seemed to float in front of her. _Hey, I got a chorizo for you…_

Why was that in her head? Why? Héctor had been many things, but he had not been like that, not even as a wild boy.

"Héctor was the liar," she said. "He was always the one telling lies. He _laughed_ at them."

"He told jokes. He played roles."

"What roles? My husband? Your papá?" Imelda put her hands in her hair and tugged at it. Ernesto had said that. Roles. He tried to play the role you set for him.

"Mamá, let me take this. Let me keep it. You don't have to see it, but please don't take it away. Please don't. I need it. I need my letters."

For an insane moment that seemed to last longer than it probably did, Imelda's hands itched to slap Coco's face - Héctor's face, in so many ways - and take the photo. Then she would march into Coco's room (with its northern light so the baby wouldn't be disturbed by the sunshine), and she would rip it apart until she found the letters, and then she would burn all of them, the same way she'd burned her guitar, the same way the half-written poems had gone, the same way…

 _Don't do this. Not again._

The madness broke, went back to wherever it came from in the first place, and there was just her daughter, crouched on the living room floor, bleeding from half a dozen little cuts.

Imelda knelt down beside her and held her. "I'm sorry, Coco. I'm sorry. Of course. Keep them. Shut them away from me, but keep them. I'm so sorry, mijita. What have we done to you?"

Coco flung her arms around Imelda's neck and said, "It's all right, Mamá. Everything will be all right. _I'll_ be all right."

Imelda pulled away and stroked Coco's cheek. She'd cut her own hand somewhere, and it left a bright red streak. "Let's get your cuts cleaned up," she said. "Then I'll… I'll take care of this." She gestured vaguely at the broken glass. "I'm sorry."

Coco sighed. "Mamá, what _is_ it?"

"I just don't know what to believe," Imelda said. "I… I never knew what I could believe."

Coco seemed like she might argue, might start a defense of Héctor, but she didn't. Instead, she took Imelda's bloody hand in her own and said, "I love you, Mamá. Believe that."

"I love you, too, mija." She shook her head. "Let's get cleaned up. We… we have no one left to talk to about this."

"I know."

"And you really must never talk to de la Cruz. He will tell you terrible lies. He said he would."

"About Papá?"

"And me. And yourself."

Coco found a smile somewhere. She held up the curled picture of Héctor's face beside her own, so like it. "I don't think I have to worry about the worst one he'd try."

Imelda surprised herself with a laugh. "No. No, you really don't. But you don't need those lies in your head."

"All right. I don't want them there."

Imelda stood up, not letting go of Coco's hand, and guided her up as well. "Come. We'll get you cleaned up."

They went into the bathroom, and Coco sat on the toilet seat while Imelda wet a cloth and rummaged for bandages, ignoring the cut on her own hand. It looked almost as it had three months ago, when Coco had suddenly screamed, and Imelda had gone in and realized that it was time to teach her about how to take care of herself each month, when instead of bandages, she'd been rummaging for rags from the bin. When had she grown up so much?

"Mamá?"

Imelda shook her head, realizing that she had just stopped mid-rummage. "Sorry. Time just… goes on, doesn't it?"

"Yes."

"Be careful, Coco. Don't do anything foolish."

"Yes, Mamá. I will be the first to never do anything foolish."

Imelda laughed a little. Not much. "Don't do the same foolish things I did."

"Like having me?"

"Never that." She pinched Coco's nose, as she had when she was a small child. "But don't do it so young, all right?"

"All right, Mamá."

Imelda found the bandages and spent the next ten minutes cleaning and covering up Coco's cuts. The picture - and the bit with Héctor's face on it - sat mutely on top of a laundry hamper, neither of them paying any attention. When she was finished, Coco took them wordlessly and disappeared to her room. There was a little table there with a shallow drawer, and Imelda heard the drawer open and close twice. She had probably put the letters in there as well.

 _I will never open that drawer,_ Imelda decided, taking the last bandage and wrapping it around her own cut. _That drawer does not exist to me._

It seemed like a good decision. She couldn't risk any more bouts of madness, certainly nowhere that Coco could see.

She had a business to run, and a daughter to raise, and bachelor brothers she really ought to see about finding wives for before they ran out of time. As to her vanished husband, her wild musician… there was nothing she could do about that. Héctor had made his choices. He had walked out into the gray, and he had disappeared into it.

 _Yes, but Imelda… why did de la Cruz tell you lies? Would it not have been amusing enough for him to watch you squander your money chasing Héctor down, just to find him laughing and clowning on some Yanqui stage? Why go on about Wittington and… and the thing he said about why Héctor had needed money from the guitar? If you found him, he could tell you that wasn't true, so de la Cruz knows you won't find him, and…_

And what? Ernesto had told her lies to get her to waste all of her time and energy chasing after an echo. To make her angry so she would do things that were… ill-advised. He probably didn't think any further than imagining Héctor laughing in her face.

"Dammit, Héctor," she muttered. "And damn _you_ , and your damnable ambition."

She'd shared his ambition once, of course. She'd sung with him, and she'd felt the warmth of the audience's applause. She'd even delighted in it when one of the traveling mariachis had offered them a place, though she couldn't take it. That was the first time Héctor had proposed to her, when he was fifteen and she was sixteen. "We could go on the road together if we were married," he'd said. "We wouldn't need a chaperone, and we could make good money…"

But the twins had only been twelve, then. She couldn't leave them alone, and while they could carry tunes well enough, no one would ever mistake them for professionals on the road. She had to stay. He'd gone with Ernesto that time, though that had been the first…

Well, she had wanted to make sure he had something to come home to.

 _That is a lie_ , a voice in her head said, and it wasn't hers this time. It was Héctor's. Even after all this time, she knew it. It had a lilt to it, a bit of a laugh at her foibles. It wasn't like her own stern admonitions at all. _That is a lie, mi amor, and it always was the one you told yourself._

It was. There was no point arguing. She had taken Héctor's boyhood because she had wanted him. And because she had loved him in a way that had stopped being girlish long before. And then she had destroyed him, taken away his choices and his chances and…

"No," she said. "Stop it."

He'd come back after a month, full of stories and joy. And money. Oh, the things he was going to do with the tiny bit of money Ernesto had left him after paying for "expenses," whatever those might have been. (Héctor wasn't sure, but he'd shrugged it off, since Ernesto had taken care of everything financial anyway.) How he'd loved the audiences. "Oh, mi amor, you have to come next time! We'll find something for the boys to do. Everyone here has heard us, but out there… they'll love you so much! Not as much as I do, of course, but no one loves _anyone_ that much…"

Where had they been when he'd said that? The theater? Probably, it was their most usual haunt when it was empty and they had finished their rehearsals. There was a pile of old costumes back there, and…

She shook her head sharply. What did it matter if he'd said it in the theater, or in Ceci's studio, or in the old, abandoned train depot, or any of their other special places? What did _any_ of it matter? Why was she even thinking of it? It had been a mad, wild time in their lives. That was when he'd written the absurd "Poco Loco" about her, claiming that she made his head go up like fireworks, thinking in circles around him while he danced to keep up with her leaps of logic. As if _she_ were the confusing one.

She might have gone with him on a second tour. He'd nearly talked her into it. Get married to keep it respectable, and then pack up the twins as stage hands and just take the show on the road. He was going to do it without Ernesto, too ("Though we may have to sneak out of town on a moonless night to avoid him"). There had even been talk about just staying on the road until they got tired of it. ("After we've seen everything in the world, and sung for everyone, of course.")

But then, there had been Coco.

For Imelda, that had been the end of any thought of touring. She'd felt a profound need to build a life for the baby, and a tour was no place for that. Héctor never questioned this.

Never. He'd been happy about the baby. She was sure of it, even now. But had he stayed happy? If he had stayed happy, then why had he left? If he wasn't happy, then why _would_ he stay?

 _Your crazy wishes are my ardent commands._

Of course. Because she had commanded it.

But he'd never really wanted to give up the tour. Ernesto had talked him - easily - into week long engagements out of town. He pretended they were a burden, but Imelda saw him when he came back, that wild light in his eyes again. "Oh, Imelda, you should have seen the crowds! They loved it! How they danced and clapped!" And he would pick her up and swing her around, and then he would pick up Coco, and they would laugh, and Imelda would laugh, but she'd seen it. She'd always seen it. The crowds lit him up in a way she never could, no matter how hard she tried. He was drunk on them, and it would last for days after he came home. He would go to the plaza and play again, for free if no one felt like paying. He would tell crazy stories about things he'd seen. She even remembered the routine. "Ah, yes… when I said I sang for the King of England… that was a lie! But I did sing for the Alcalde of Acapulco!"

That was a lie… that was a lie…

 _But what was the_ truth _, Héctor? Where, in all the wild stories, did you hide that?_

"Mamá?"

She looked over her shoulder. She'd been standing at the bathroom sink, her bandaged hand gripping the edge hard enough to hurt. She didn't know how long. Long enough for Coco to have changed back into her everyday clothes and redone her hair into its usual twin trenzas. "I'm all right," she said.

"I know. I put everything away." She bit her lip. "Do you want me to make dinner?"

"No. It's my turn. Besides, Señora Mendoza asked for you especially to do her new shoes. She wants that design you made with the lovely little turn on the toe cap."

"Really? Someone asked for me especially?"

"Someone did. You know I don't make up stories about shoes."

Coco smiled widely. "I do know that, yes. I'll get started." She started to leave.

"Coco?" Imelda said, before she got far. "I'm sorry there were no answers."

"So am I."

"But I think I will not be looking at any more of his movie posters."

Coco said nothing, but the disgusted wrinkle in her nose expressed her views on the subject clearly enough. She nodded, and went down to the workshop.

Imelda splashed her face with cold water and went down to the kitchen. Oscar had left a mess yesterday - the boys never cleaned up for themselves - so she had to straighten things out before she started working. Cooking was never going to be one of her great talents, but it was familiar and comfortable, and it felt good to do it. She was about halfway through a passable green mole when she heard the twins pull up outside.

They came in, carrying a heavy roll of leather between them, and dropped it in the bin near the workshop door. They were sweating and dirty from the road, and more than a little bit ripe.

"Ugh," she said. "Go, clean up. I'll never find you wives at this rate."

"Is this a going concern now?" Felipe asked.

"She obviously needs more hands in the shop," Oscar said. "She expects us to provide them."

"Very amusing. Clean up. It's not the chilis that are making my nose sting right now."

They performed a complex choosing routine that she didn't follow, and which Felipe apparently won, since he went into the bathroom. Oscar sat down at the table and began eating the remains of a pepper, his eyes watering at the heat. He put his feet up on the table and crossed his ankles.

"What happened to your hand, Mamá Imelda?"

She glanced down at the bandage. "I dropped a photo frame."

"You're very dressed up. What were you up to today?"

"Nothing important. Just business. Get your feet off the table, Oscar. Really. You weren't raised in a barn."

"A barn would have been an improvement sometimes. They make barns for livestock. Much more valuable than orphans."

"Let me correct myself. Get your feet off the table, Oscar. Now. And clean up the dust."

He put his feet down and wiped half-heartedly at the little pile of dust they'd shaken off. "You've been crying. Your eyes are puffy."

"I got pepper juice in my eyes."

"Imelda…"

"Let it be, Oscar. Whatever I did today, it is done. And there is nothing further to be said."

Oscar looked like he might argue, but Felipe came out of the bathroom and ordered him in instead. The evening's life began, as it did every other evening. The twins promised Imelda to go looking for wives soon. Coco came out, looking a bit wan, but joining in the conversation enthusiastically when she learned the subject. She made lists of all of her requirements for their wives, and began naming their children (who had to be born in pairs, of course). Imelda let it all roll on around her.

The family would be all right.

In the end, nothing else mattered.

It was almost midnight when the twins went back out to their cabins, and Coco


	12. Chapter 12

12

 _1922_  
didn't know what had started the rampage. It was in full gear when she came back on the afternoon before the new year began.

Mamá was mostly all right now. The crying had stopped, as long as Coco didn't sing. She didn't sing in church on Christmas, but she smiled a bit when she heard the music. She never said Papá's name, just "my husband" or "your papá," and either was only if she had to, but she wasn't angry all the time.

There was less music, of course, without Papá, but she didn't stop Coco humming all the time, and twice, Coco had even seen her take out her own guitar. It wasn't like Papá's fancy guitar. It was light brown and had roses painted on it. The first time, on Coco's fifth birthday, she had even played it and sung the song Papá had sent. The second time was just before Christmas. She'd had it out and on her knee, and Coco saw her hand hovering over the strings, but then she'd looked up and seen Coco, and had blushed and put it away like she'd been caught wandering around in her underthings.

But things had stayed where they belonged, other than the things in Mamá's trunk. Papá's old notebooks were still on his desk, with the scribbled out lyrics of songs that he'd finished in his real book. There was a shelf of instruments that he only played a little bit and hadn't taken with him - a trumpet, a violin, some panpipes, and a set of hand drums. There was an old Victrola and a stack of records for it. These were dusty and never played anymore, but they were there. Coco remembered one especially that Papá had played for her. He and Mamá had been recorded singing together in the very old days, before there even was a Coco. "But we were singing to you anyway," he said. "We always sing to you!" Mamá's old dresses, which she used to wear for singing, hung in her closet. She said one of them - a pretty purple one with flounces of lace - had become her wedding dress when it was time to get married. (Coco wasn't sure how you knew it was such a time. She pictured a special clock ticking down, like a cuckoo clock, where a bride and groom popped out when the time came.)

Mamá also had instruments that she used to play when she sang, like tambourines and maracas and castanets. They were in their places on the shelves on the morning of New Year's Eve. Mamá no longer played them, and Coco could count on one hand the number of times she'd sung since Papá left, but they were _there_.

Then she had gone out with Tío Oscar to deliver charity shoes to the church. One out of every ten pairs they made was for the orphans, and Coco was excited to go and help hand them out. She had even made little designs for some of them, and she chatted with the little girls who got them. They were happy to have brand new shoes instead of hand-me downs. She was talking to a girl named Leticia when a new nun went up to Tío Oscar and said, "There is still no word?" The nun was young, about the same age as Mamá. She had big pretty brown eyes just a shade lighter than her skin, and a big bosom under her habit.

Tío Oscar said, "Let it go, Teresa. I'm telling you, do not ask anymore."

Coco had never heard Tío Oscar not call the sisters "Sister" anything. It seemed strange to hear a nun talked to with a regular name. But she didn't ask about it. It would have been rude to stop talking to Leticia and admit she was eavesdropping on grown-ups. By the time Leticia had finished trying on her shoes and spinning wildly around, Sister Teresa was gone, and Tío Oscar was talking to the padre. Coco moved on and helped a little boy named Francisco, who didn't know how to tie his shoes yet. As she taught him, she thought about Papá teaching her, going slowly over the way the ties needed to cross and loop. It was a good memory, and she drifted off into her favorite fantasy, that she was helping people in a village that had been attacked by a dragon. Soon, she would start finding buttons that were from Papá's jacket, and they would lead her up to the mountain where the dragon had a pile of gold. Papá would be tied to a pole, and Coco would pick up a sword and fight the dragon, and then cut Papá free. He would hug her and tell her, "I will write a song about how brave you are!" And she would give him kisses and say, "I will write a song about how much I missed you!" And then they would find Mamá, and all three of them would dance like they used to. Then -

"Coco?"

She looked up from a little girl whose feet she was measuring, and found Tío Oscar smiling down at her. "We're on the last pair, niña. It will fit who it fits."

They'd said their goodbyes and got back into the wagon, which was much lighter now. The horse, Rocinante, pulled it back to the shop a lot more quickly than they'd come. Coco was telling Tío Oscar a joke she'd heard at school when they pulled into the yard, and that was when they'd seen the rampage that had started somehow while they were gone.

Sister Teresa was out in front of the shop, looking frightened, and a pile of clothes was strewn on the dusty ground in front of her.

Papá's clothes.

Coco's voice fell away, and she slipped down from the wagon as Mamá came out of the shop door again, carrying another bundle of clothes. "Here!" she shouted, throwing it into the pile. "You want them! Take them all!"

"Imelda!"

"Go on and tell the padre and all the other gossipy old women that the besotted idiot has gone away for good, just like you always said he would!" She put a hand on her forehead in an exaggerated way, like she was a clown making a joke of it. "Oh, no, wait, I forgot. Now he's not a besotted idiot, he's a santo who'd just want to _help out_."

"I was only asking - "

"Do you want my clothes, too? You can have my wedding dress. I'm sure there's some other girl with foolish choices who needs one with a loose waist. Just leave me the black ones, that's what I'm allowed to wear now, isn't that what you think?"

"Is it what you think, Imelda?"

Mamá didn't answer. Instead, she stormed back into the house. Sister Teresa looked at the pile of clothes, then made the sign of the cross and followed Mamá inside.

Coco took a few steps toward the house. Tío Felipe came around the side and held up his hands. "Coco, maybe you should come and visit with Tío Oscar and me. You can help with the new cabins. And…"

But Coco slipped around him and followed the sister. They had gone to Mamá's room, where the trunk from under the bed had been pulled out. Papá's charro suit was tossed onto the bed, and there were a few bits of his other clothes still in there, but now Mamá was at her own closet, tossing her pretty dresses out onto the floor. "Take them, _Sister_ ," she spat. "Take them all, and leave. The poor need them, don't they? I seem to recall you needing _lots_ of pretty dresses when you were poor. The more of your bosoms they showed, the better."

"I forgive that."

"How generous of you."

"Imelda, you need to calm down before you do something you regret."

"Take them!" Mamá threw her dresses out into the workshop, then stormed back around and went into the living room. Coco didn't register what she was doing at first. She swept her arm over the shelf where the instruments were, sending them down in a jangling tangle. "Take these, too. Didn't you say I needed a clean start? A new life? Well, here is my clean start. Take it all. It doesn't exist to me!" Her eyes fell on the Victrola, and she tossed it onto the pile as well. "Go on. Take it."

Sister Teresa inched over and took the pile of records. "I will take these," she said. "Especially this one. Before you do something stupid." She pointed at the one that was Mamá and Papá singing together.

"Take it all," Mamá said again, almost hissing. "Take it all and brag about how right you were."

"I'm not bragging, Imelda."

"Go." Mamá turned her back.

Sister Teresa took a few steps backward, and nearly stumbled over Coco. "Niña," she said. "I'm sorry…"

Mamá turned and saw Coco now. "You see, Teresa? You are as careless as ever."

Sister Teresa finally fled from the room. Coco saw her through the door, picking up Papá's clothes in the street. The uncles helped her bundle them up.

Mamá looked at Coco, and there was something frightening in her face, a kind of strange, empty look.

"Mamá?"

She blinked. "I… Coco… I…"

The uncles came rushing in. "Imelda," Tío Felipe said, panting. "Why don't you…"

Mamá turned on him in a fury. "Don't you dare try to _handle_ me, hermanito!"

Tío Felipe put his hands up in a calming gesture, and Tío Oscar took Coco's hand. "Come, niña," he said. "We'll go to my house while Mamá… cleans up."

Coco didn't move, but she was very small - at least she felt very small, not like someone who could fight a dragon - and when Tío Oscar picked her up, she couldn't very well fight. He carried her to his little cabin, which still had canvas walls, and brought out his silly shoes for her to play with. He even, very quietly, made them dance, and sang a whispered song.

Beyond the canvas wall, Coco saw the bonfire go up in the courtyard. It cast Mamá and Tío Felipe's shadows as they stalked back and forth to the house. Mamá came out with armfuls of her dresses, and Tío Felipe kept following her, pleading. "This is madness, Imelda! You really must stop!"

She ran out of dresses as the sun went down, and what she came out with next…

Coco put her hand over her mouth and ran outside.

The trumpet went into the fire first. It barely made a noise, sinking into the ashes of Mamá's pretty dresses. The hand drums flared up with a boom. The violin made shrieking noises as the strings burned, or maybe that was just in Coco's head. Then Mamá took her own guitar, the one with the roses, and she smashed it into the flames. For a moment, she brought it back up, a flaming torch against the darkening sky, and then she flung it at last into the flames.

"There," she said. "Are you happy?" she shouted at the sky. "It's all yours! Take it. This is my clean start. No more foolishness."

And she stomped into the house, smoke swirling behind her.

"Let me try," Tío Oscar said behind Coco, and then Tío Felipe picked her up and took her out of the courtyard, into the alley behind the house. It still smelled like the baker's bread. It didn't seem right that it should still smell the same.

"What's wrong with Mamá?" Coco asked.

"Mamá is… she's sad, Coco."

"Why did she want to give her dresses away? Why keep the black ones?"

"Black is for… it's what widows wear. To show that they are sad."

"What's a widow?"

"A woman whose husband is dead."

Coco bit her lip. "Is my papá dead?"

"We don't know, Coco. We only know he left."

"He said he would come home. He promised."

"That's why Mamá Imelda is angry." Tío Felipe sighed. "She'll be all right, Coco."

"If black is for sad, what color is for angry?"

"I don't think they've made one of those."

"They should. Then Sister Teresa would have known better than to ask for Papá's things."

"A good point," Tío Felipe said, without much conviction. "You should be in charge of these things."

They walked around the square without saying much more. There were some mariachis playing, but Coco had never been less interested in them.

Finally, Tío Felipe guided her home.

Mamá was in the kitchen, with a glass of something that smelled funny and made Coco dizzy when she climbed up on her lap. Mamá had said she was sorry, so very sorry, and she would make a good New Year now. She set out supper and smiled as well as she could.

It was the first year Coco stayed up to greet the new year, but 1923 felt no different to her than 1922. There was no special change in the air, and Mamá and uncles almost forgot to mark the moment. They were telling each other stories of times gone by, and the uncles were keeping Mamá's glass full. She was calm now, and she held Coco and cuddled her, kissing her head and promising to be a good Mamá from now on.

Coco clung to her tightly, frightened of seeing that awful, empty look come back. Just after midnight passed, Mamá carried her to her room and set her gently down in her bed. "I love you, Coco," she said. "You know that, don't you? I love you more than anything on this earth."

Coco nodded.

"I didn't mean to frighten you today."

"Yes, Mamá."

"But it's time. It's time for the new world to start. We have our shop and our house. We have the silly uncles, don't we?"

"Yes."

"And most important of all, we have each other, don't we?"

Coco nodded.

Mamá leaned over and kissed her head, then tucked her tightly into her covers. "Everything will be all right, Coco," she said firmly. "I promise you that, and I will keep that promise. We will be all right, you and I. We will always have each other. And we will be all right."

And they were.

But the music was gone. It would never come back.

Time moved on. She loved her mother, but they fought until the day of the breakdown. She loved her uncles, and she had friends who she cared about. And she had the tiny scraps in her mind, the sound of Papá's voice. She would listen for it when things were quiet and she lay in her bed at night, the starlight making blue shadows on the walls.

She had many commands in varying degrees of seriousness from Mamá, but only two from Papá, and so she followed them as well as she could. The first was You'll be good for Mamá, won't you? She's a precious gift. Promise you'll be good to her, and love her so very much. This wasn't always easy - Mamá could be hard sometimes - but Coco did love her fiercely, and tried to be good. The second command was simpler: Remember me.

And so she hummed to herself when no one was home, and later, she learned to hum only inside her head. She wrote things that she called "poems" when anyone could hear - she even won a school prize for one of them, about the sounds of the workshop - but which, in her mind, followed the mysterious paths the tunes wound along. She memorized the words to all of Papá's poems, and whispered them to herself at night.

And that was how she grew up, cradled in love but still separate, still her own secret keeper. Someday, there would be someone to share her secrets with. But for now, she was 


	13. Chapter 13

13

 _1946_  
walking away again.

It wasn't forever, and it wasn't a fight, but Coco truly disliked the fact that she was turning away from her husband, even if it _was_ for the girls' sake. She could still hear Julio's voice, comforting Rosita not far away, though far enough that she couldn't make out the words.

She walked among the candles and marigolds, looking at the names of dead strangers while her arms grew heavy with Elena's weight. Beside her, Victoria walked along slowly, holding her skirt and looking around with bright, eager eyes, at the families gathered around the stones.

"Who is" - Victoria squinted importantly and read from an unvisited tombstone - "Estevan Vasquez Mendoza?" She smiled, pleased with herself for sounding it out. She was learning to read at an astonishing pace. Her beloved Mamá Imelda was her teacher in this, and she seemed unable to get enough words into her eyes.

"I don't know, mija," Coco said. "I don't have anyone here."

"Why doesn't anyone visit Señor Vasquez? Doesn't his family like him?"

"Maybe they're still at work."

Victoria bit her lip and considered it. "I think they are at work. But I think Señor Vasquez was a soldier, and he fought against Nazis."

Coco glanced at the dates, sitting down on a bench across from the grave and sitting Elena on her lap to give her arms a rest. "He would have needed to travel in time to do that, Victoria. He died before the war."

"Oh." She frowned. "What was before the war?"

"Oh, many things." Coco shook her head. "You really wouldn't remember, would you? You were barely a year old when the Potrero de Llano went down."

"The what?"

"It was a big boat. For oil. The Nazis made it sink. That's why we decided to fight them."

"With the Aztec Eagles!" Victoria said proudly. "They flew and fought and helped out! I want to be a pilot and fly a plane and fight with Nazis, like Tío Cedro."

"I think, thank God, that the chance for that fight is over. Remember… it's over? And they didn't have girls." She didn't correct Victoria about who her uncle had been fighting, either, even though he and the unit had been in the Pacific. There would be time for that later. She didn't understand it, anyway.

"That's stupid." Victoria stomped her foot, her perfectly sized shoe making a loud and delightful sound on a rock. She stomped it again for the joy of it, then mimed taking the controls of an airplane (which, in Victoria's imagination, apparently ran the same way as the new truck Mamá had bought for the shop; the uncles drove around with her in their lap and she thought she was the one doing the driving). She rose up into the air and dove for the ground, making bombing noises. "I could _fly_. You don't need strong arms to _fly_."

"You do if you're a bird," Coco said.

"I'm not a bird, Mamá. I'm a shoemaker."

"I thought you were a pilot."

This threw her, and at least seemed to derail her from the thought of gloriously defending her country from the evildoers of the world, like Julio and Rosita's brother, Cedro, who they were currently visiting at a quiet grave marker under a tree. Rosita had started weeping, thinking that he might not be visiting with his body not there - Cedro's body was long gone, somewhere in the vast ocean - which was why Julio had suggested that Coco take the girls for a walk.

Coco shuddered.

Finally, Victoria said, "I'll be a pilot who makes shoes."

"I'm not sure if you'll be able to…"

"Mamá Imelda says girls can do whatever we want, just like she did." The tone of this sentence had a kind of finality to it that Coco knew there would be no disputing. Mamá Imelda had said it, so it was so.

And maybe it _would_ be so by the time Victoria grew up. Maybe she would be a doctor who made shoes, or the president who made shoes. (Either way, Coco didn't think Victoria had gotten as far as not making shoes.) Coco amused herself by imagining it - Victoria sitting imperiously on a high workshop stool, handing down laws while she stitched seams in leather.

"Why are you laughing, Mamá?" Victoria asked.

"Because the world can be funny sometimes, mija."

She laughed, then, for no reason, stood on her head. "I will be a clown, too!" She started to walk along a line of stones, weaving back and forth comically as she pretended to lose her balance.

From somewhere deep in the shadows of Coco's memory, a gentle, much-loved voice said, _My favorite audience likes clowns. I will be a funny clown for my Coco today._

She closed her eyes and tried to lasso that voice, bring it up further. She didn't talk about Papá, as it seemed to upset everyone, but she fought tooth and nail for the scraps of him that she came across in her mind - the real memories, as opposed to the photo and letters, all living in some static past. Had that been a real one? She thought it was, but when had it happened? When had Papá said he would clown for her? She couldn't very well ask Mamá, and the only image that came to her wasn't of Papá. She wasn't sure what it was, exactly, just the glint of teeth in a smile under the impossibly black shadow of a sombrero, and the nonsense rhyme, _Perro está bailando, y papa está cantando_. What on Earth was _that_ supposed to mean? She'd remembered the rhyme before, and she thought it had been hers, and it had been before Papá left, but… a dancing dog? Why had she made a rhyme about a dancing dog?

"Mamá, what's that?"

Coco opened her eyes and frowned. Victoria's head was cocked toward the huge mausoleum, where candles and torches nearly made the cemetery as light as day. There was a crowd headed in that direction, as there often was. Aside from being de la Cruz's final resting place, there was a legend that the guitar stayed miraculously in tune. Someone had ceremoniously brought it to the plaza at noon and strummed it once to show this miracle, as they did every year on Día de los Muertos.

Coco had to get up very, very early in the morning every year so no one would see her picking the lock with her hairpin, or hear her testing the strings. And it wasn't just that she'd be in legal trouble for breaking into the mausoleum. She could only imagine the look on Mamá's face if she was caught in this particular bit of foolishness. But seeing that guitar hanging on pegs, losing its timbre, had been too much to bear, so she'd needed to do _something_. To leave it alone would have been an abomination.

To everyone else, of course, it was just part of the magic, a kind of benign haunting that gave them a thrill and something to whisper to each other about.

Fans.

And they were listening to...

Coco felt her back tense up. "It's a song, Victoria."

"Music?"

"Music."

Victoria listened as hard as she could. "There are words in it! Like the choir in church!"

"Yes, mija."

"Could we hear the words?"

"We don't need to," Coco said, trying not to let the tension into her voice. "I know them. The song is called 'Remember Me.' Ernesto de la Cruz made it very famous. He always sang it. It's about… it's about someone who has to go away, and leave someone else behind."

"Why is everyone there? Are they all his family?"

"No. His parents are buried somewhere here, but there's no one else I know of."

"His parents are dead people?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"His papá had an accident with a car in the capital. A long time ago. His mamá had a sickness."

Her eyes went wide. "Are you going to have a sickness?"

"No, mija. I'm fine."

This seemed to reassure her enough to continue what she clearly considered a fascinating conversation. "Is the man in the big cemetery house a dead person?"

"Yes. That's why he's in the cemetery."

"Why is he dead?"

"A bell fell on top of him while he was singing."

"Was he a wonderful person? Is that why everyone visits him instead of Señor Vasquez?" She pointed at the grave they'd stopped at. "Or will they visit Señor Vasquez later?"

"They visit de la Cruz because he was famous," Coco said. "He was a singer."

"Singing makes you famous?"

"It can."

"Why?"

"I suppose because… because people think of the music as something that made them happy, so they love the person who gave it to them. Or the person they think gave it to them."

"What?"

"Nothing, mija. Ignore me when I talk about this."

Victoria looked like she might argue - she was as stubborn as Mamá, and in fact looked a great deal like her right now, the line in the middle of her forehead deepening as she frowned - but in the end, she was too enchanted by the night, with its candles and flowers, to work up a good argument. It was a good thing.

After de la Cruz had died, Coco had talked Julio into driving her to Mexico City, telling Mamá and the uncles that they wanted to have a vacation. In fact, she'd visited with a studio executive and tried to tell them that de la Cruz's songs were Papá's. She'd even brought the letters, and told them that they should have some kind of old screen test of de la Cruz that would show Papá. The man had been rude and dismissive, and all but accused them of forging the words to common songs and trying to profit on the death of a man who could no longer defend himself. Then he had threatened a lawsuit if the subject ever saw the light of day again. Victoria had only been an infant then, still at the breast, and Coco had sat in an anonymous hotel room with her afterward, crying onto her sweet little head as she fed. Julio had spoken to a lawyer, but the lawyer had told him that there was no case based on nothing but letters that might have been forged. And besides, the studio would only claim that they owned the songs - whoever wrote them - and they were not about to relinquish those rights, or the royalties they brought.

Coco didn't care about the royalties. She just wanted Papá's name on the screen. Something to prove that he had existed once, somewhere other than in her head. She wanted his life acknowledged.

Julio had knelt beside her and put his hand over hers on Victoria's back. "You're the acknowledgment, mi vida. As a papá, I can tell you now with perfect authority that it matters more than a name on the screen. And you should tell your mother what we came here for. You should tell her what this means to you. She loves you. She wouldn't hate you for it."

"Of course she wouldn't." Coco shook her head. "But it would hurt her, for no reason." She smiled. "She knows in her heart what we're doing, cariño. About this, about you taking me dancing last night, about everything. You'll see. You'll see, because she won't ask."

And of course, she hadn't asked, any further than asking if they'd had a nice trip. Coco had told her the capital was too busy for her tastes, and had too many rude people. Mamá had nodded. There wasn't any further need for talk. They understood each other.

"Can we see the cemetery house?" Victoria asked, pulling Coco out of the past. "I never looked at it."

"I don't know, mija. We're not tourists. Besides, maybe it's time to go back and see Papá and Tía Rosita."

"And Tío Cedro tonight!" Victoria added, clapping her hands. "Do you think Tía Rosita is all right?"

"I'm sure she is." Coco sighed theatrically and picked up baby Elena as she stood. "This one is getting so big, though! She'll need to start walking soon, or I'll have muscles like a luchador."

"I'll make her walking shoes!" Victoria announced, and started back. Coco followed.

In fact, Rosita seemed more or less back to normal. She was cheerfully talking to Cedro about the girls, and about learning to make shoes. She included her parents in this as well, saying it was like upholstery, which she hadn't believed when Julio had first explained it that way to her. "So," she was saying when Coco got back, "it's like we're still in _our_ shop. And I'm getting very good at making the most comfortable slippers!"

Coco smiled. Rosita was a lovely addition to the family and she helped a great deal with the business end of things, but unless things changed, Mamá would never let her craft anything but bedroom slippers. She was altogether too excited, and worked too fast. Mamá loved her anyway, but business was business.

It was strange, spending Día de los Muertos here. Coco and Mamá and the uncles had never had anyone to spend the day with. There was never any ofrenda until Julio had put one up for his parents, and later, his brother. Coco had debated with herself about putting Papá's picture up there, but she'd decided not to. It would open a lot of old wounds, and no matter what Julio believed, Coco couldn't bring herself to think it made a difference to the dead. The dead were dead.

She didn't say it to the girls, because Julio wanted them raised with a proper respect for traditions, but for her own part, she wasn't even sure there was anything after the end. Mamá had stopped bringing her to church after Sister Teresa had made such a mess of things, and she'd only gone to a church school because Mamá didn't want her in school with boys. Whether Mamá still believed or not, she didn't know, but for herself, she just never seemed to have formed the habit. She had never felt Papá's presence, and in the graveyard, she only felt the wind. She supposed the girls would have a better outlook than she did, or at any rate, that it would do them no harm to believe. But to put up Papá's picture… it would do him no good, and it would hurt the living.

Still, it was a pleasant enough tradition, and it was a fine thing to honor people like Cedro, and to keep your love for them. If it helped Rosita deal with Cedro's death to put pan de muerto on his grave and pretend she was talking to him, then it was a good, healthy thing.

They spent an hour at the grave, and the tour group at the mausoleum made a disinterested pass by the non-famous, looking at the revelers avidly, like they were visiting a zoo. Some might have been Yanquis or even European, but Coco thought most of them were just city folk who'd forgotten their own ways, just as she would have without Julio to keep her grounded.

Candles started to gutter at graves whose visitors had already gone home, and a lovely cool breeze came up.

Julio sighed. "We should go home. We can keep talking at the ofrenda. Coco, did I ever tell you the story about when Cedro and I decided to hitch rides up to the border?"

"That's a very long trip. And no. And you left Rosita behind?"

"They always left Rosita behind," Rosita said fondly, with a grin at her big brother.

"I'll tell the story at home," Julio said. "The girls are tired. They should sleep."

They gathered up their things and started for home. When they turned onto the cemetery's main path, Coco looked over her shoulder at the giant memorial to de la Cruz. Someone was still piping Papá's songs from a hidden speaker. And…

She stopped and frowned, shifting Elena in her arms. There was a small figure in the shadows, a…

"Julio," she said, "will you take the girls for a while? I… I think I lost an earring while we were walking."

"All right. We could help you look."

"No, it's all right. You're right, the babies need their rest."

"I'm not a baby," Victoria complained.

"The young ladies need rest, too."

Julio gave her a piercing look, then looked over her shoulder. She didn't know if he saw what she did, but he took Elena and gave her a big kiss, then said, "Victoria, take Tía Rosita's hand. We'll go home. Mamá will catch up."

And they walked away, leaving Coco alone on the path.

She sighed, and walked through the flickering shadows until she reached the deeper, solid shadow of the wall of the mausoleum.

Mamá was sitting on the steps, beside a decorative urn filled with marigolds, looking resentfully through the giant doors.

She didn't look surprised to see Coco. "All right," she said. "Go on, tell me I'm being a foolish old woman."

"You're not even fifty, Mamá. What foolish thing are you thinking of?"

"Staring at…" She gestured through the door, which was made of glass panes, so people could see in to the sarcophagus and the memorial painting… and the guitar. Coco didn't need to wonder which she was staring at.

Coco sat down beside her and took her hand. "If it's foolishness, we're both fools."

"I'm a widow, Coco. Whether he's dead or not, he left me a widow. He never should have left."

"You're still angry."

"If I wasn't angry, I wouldn't recognize myself in the mirror." Mamá smiled ruefully. "You're a better person than I am, mija."

"No. I'm the person who didn't have to figure out how to survive it, because I'm the person who had you to do that for me." Coco leaned her head on Mamá's shoulder, then caught the music in the air. "It's 'Poco Loco,'" she said. "It was yours."

"I've trained myself not to hear his songs anymore," Mamá said, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes, letting the music in, if only for a moment. Years fell away from her face. "It needs an update, though. I've gotten more than poco loco. Mucho loco."

"I'll try and write it, if you want…" Coco grinned.

Mamá rolled her eyes. "I'll forget this in the morning. You'll forget this in the morning. Don't tell anyone I was listening. I don't feel like looking at smug faces."

"I don't tell your secrets. Even to you."

"It's much appreciated." Mamá reached up and stroked her hair, as she had so many years ago, and they sat together through the rest of "Poco Loco," not talking. Coco didn't know where the music was coming from, exactly. For all she knew, it was still in their heads. But it seemed more likely that there was a cleverly hidden record player, and a cleverly hidden man changing the songs. After a pause, de la Cruz began to sing "Only A Song," and they sat through most of that one as well without any words (except Papá's) between them.

Finally, near the end, Mamá sighed, let go of Coco's hand, and stood up. "That is enough foolishness for one year. I shouldn't indulge it."

"Why shouldn't you do what you love, Mamá?"

"Because it's…" She shook her head sharply, the hard look coming back into her face. "Look what it did to your papá. This thing that's in all of us, like a snake, waiting to strike and make us crazy. We all hear it in our heads. I've even seen the baby tapping her feet. But tapping feet are wandering feet. And wandering feet…" She gestured, now almost contemptuously at the guitar. "We know where they lead."

Coco thought about trying to bring Mamá back to the music, but knew it would be useless. Instead, she took a deep breath, then stood up, linking her arm through Mamá's. Together, they walked away from the tomb, away from the wedding guitar, away from the past.

The song followed them almost to the cemetery gate now that the rest of the graveyard was quiet, but they lost it when they passed through into the land of the living.

In the cemetery, the worshipful young man who'd been tasked with playing records never saw them leave, or for that matter, saw them at all, so engrossed was he in the spell the music wove.

Beyond the cemetery, where the living saw only darkness, the glowing marigold bridge stretched into the fog. A xolo dog sat at the base of it, as she did every year, as her father had before her, and as his mother had, waiting for the one who had danced with them on a sunny morning long ago, and left his scent on their line, crossing their destinies together. They knew the scent of his mate, his pup, and her pups, and the broken and bleeding edges of their lives. Someday, there would be healing. Her instincts told her that she would know what to do if it fell to her. But it would not be today, or tomorrow.

She waited patiently until dawn, when the petals began to collapse away into the nothingness between worlds, then, shoulders slumped, returned to the plaza, where her pups were play-fighting over a chicken leg someone had tossed them. She lay down and watched them fondly until weariness overtook her and he fell asleep.

It would be another year. And another, and another.

But instinct was not dampened by calendars she didn't understand anyway.

The time would come, and she or hers would finally heal this break, and then they could become whatever it was they had started to become on the day of dancing.

For now, she slept, and the music of the plaza washed over her, and over her pups, and the humans, and even the broken house they watched so quietly.

And life went on.

 **THE END**


End file.
